Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s conservator is pushing back in court against local government efforts to squeeze the GSEs for payments of real estate transfer taxes – taxes that are contrary to the companies’ Congressional charter and to federal law, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Last week, the FHFA filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against the Illinois Department of Revenue and six counties led by DeKalb County that are trying to collect transfer taxes from Fannie and Freddie. The counties initiated litigation earlier in the week by filing a class-action lawsuit to compel the GSEs to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in uncollected real estate transfer taxes from the past five years.