Danny Masterson will remain in prison until at least 2042 after a California appeals court on Tuesday, Oct. 27, upheld his two rape convictions.

A three-judge panel from California's Second District Court of Appeal rejected the former "That '70s Show" star's bid to overturn his 2023 guilty verdict, ruling in an 89-page opinion that "judgment is affirmed," as first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

Masterson, 50, was convicted in May 2023 of two counts of rape by force or fear for assaults on two women at his Hollywood Hills home in the early 2000s. Both women were members of the Church of Scientology at the time. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo sentenced him to 30 years to life in prison in September 2023.

His defense team raised nearly a dozen arguments on appeal, including claims that the trial judge showed hostility toward Scientology and that jurors should not have heard evidence about the church. The panel rejected both. "Admission of Scientology evidence did not violate the First Amendment and was not an abuse of the trial court's discretion," the judges wrote, according to Deadline.

The court found the Scientology evidence helped jurors understand why the women delayed reporting the assaults to police. Both women, identified in court as J.B. and N.T., said church officials told them not to go to law enforcement or face expulsion from the church and its community.

Masterson attorney Cliff Gardner said in a statement that the decision "ignores the extraordinary new evidence that has been before them for more than a year," referencing statements he said the two accusers made describing their encounters with the actor as consensual.

Attorney Eric Multhaup, also representing Masterson, called the ruling "fundamentally wrong" in a separate statement reported by the Los Angeles Times. Multhaup alleged the appeals court gave the habeas corpus petition only "a one-paragraph summary of the one-sided evidence presented by the prosecution."

The legal team said it plans to petition the California Supreme Court and pursue a separate habeas corpus claim based on evidence they say was never presented to the jury.

Masterson was first charged in 2020 with three counts of rape. His first trial in 2022 ended in a mistrial after jurors deadlocked. A second jury convicted him on two counts but could not reach a verdict on a third charge involving a former girlfriend. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office did not retry that count, and it was dismissed.

He is serving his sentence at California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo. According to a state database cited by the Los Angeles Times, Masterson will be eligible for parole in June 2042, with a consultation scheduled for May 2038.

No statement from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office on the Oct. 27 ruling appears in published reports. Deadline reported that the Church of Scientology did not respond to its request for comment.