The Online Sellers’ Bill of Rights Act: what it means for your marketplace business

If you sell on Amazon, Walmart, or another major marketplace, you already know the fear: one policy flag, and your account gets suspended, your inventory gets held, and your money stops moving, sometimes with no real explanation and no clear way to appeal. A new bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives wants to change that.

The Online Sellers’ Bill of Rights Act of 2026 (H.R. 9799) would put hard limits on how long marketplaces can hold your inventory or your payments, and require them to tell you what you did wrong. Here’s what the bill would do, where it stands right now, and why the underlying problem it’s trying to fix is worth thinking about regardless of whether it becomes law.

What the Online Sellers’ Bill of Rights Act would do

Introduced July 21, 2026 by Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) and several co-sponsors, H.R. 9799 is now before the House Judiciary Committee. The bill wouldn’t stop marketplaces from removing counterfeit goods, suspending fraudulent sellers, or enforcing product safety rules. What it would do is put a federal floor under how marketplaces handle enforcement: inventory holds, payment holds, policy changes, investigations, and appeals.

The five protections, in plain terms

1. 30-day inventory holds. Marketplaces could still hold suspected-counterfeit inventory, but only for up to 30 days. After that, they’d have to release it unless they can clearly show the goods are unlawful.
2. 30-day payment holds. The same 30-day cap would apply to frozen seller funds. Suspicion alone wouldn’t be enough to hold the money longer; the marketplace would need evidence.
3. 30-day window on newly gated products. If a marketplace restricts a product or category after it’s already in the marketplace’s fulfillment network, the seller would get at least 30 days to sell through the remaining inventory or return it for free.
4. 30 days’ notice on policy changes. Material changes, including fees, commissions, eligibility, and compliance requirements, would require 30 days’ written notice before taking effect.
5. Real appeals, not form letters. Marketplaces would have to name the specific policy violated, share the relevant facts, describe the proposed penalty, and give a timeline for resolution. Generic suspension notices wouldn’t meet the bar.

What the bill doesn’t fix

The bill has a real gap: it doesn’t clearly define which marketplaces it covers. It applies to sellers on a “dominant platform,” but there’s no revenue, transaction, or market-share threshold attached to that word. Amazon and Walmart are the obvious targets. Whether Etsy, eBay, or Poshmark would be covered is anyone’s guess until the FTC writes the rules or a court decides.

It’s also not law. H.R. 9799 is still in committee, and if it passes, the FTC has 180 days after enactment to issue rules before violations carry real teeth (they’d count as unfair competition under the FTC Act, with a private right to sue and triple damages available to sellers). Expect marketplace operators to push back hard on those provisions before this is settled.

The real lesson for ecommerce sellers, bill or no bill

Even with H.R. 9799’s 30-day caps in place, 30 days is still a full month without your inventory or your revenue. For a lean, growing business, that’s long enough to miss a peak season, blow a cash flow forecast, or lose momentum with customers you can’t ship to.

The safest posture isn’t waiting on a law. It’s reducing how much any single platform’s enforcement process can hurt you in the first place. That means keeping your inventory and fulfillment on infrastructure you control, not something that only exists inside your Amazon or Walmart seller account. A marketplace suspension is still a real problem for any seller, but the businesses that keep their own warehousing and fulfillment operation running can keep shipping everywhere else while they sort it out.

What to do while this bill works through Congress

• Track H.R. 9799. It’s currently with the House Judiciary Committee.
• Know your rights under your current marketplace seller agreements today. Don’t wait on legislation to understand your existing appeal options.
• Audit how dependent your revenue is on a single marketplace.
• Build fulfillment infrastructure that doesn’t live or die with one seller account.

If a 30-day hold (frozen inventory or frozen payments) would be enough to hurt your business, that’s worth a conversation. Speak to an expert about building fulfillment operations that give you room to breathe no matter what happens on the marketplace side.