An appeals court has rejected disgraced entertainer Bill Cosby’s bid to overturn his sexual assault conviction.

The ruling is being closely watched as Cosby was the first celebrity convicted in the #MeToo era, when a jury found him guilty in April 2018 of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home in 2004.

Cosby’s spokesman attacked the ruling as “a political scheme to destroy America’s Dad”.

The Pennsylvania state Superior Court says the trial evidence of five other accusers was evidence that Cosby had a “unique sexual assault playbook”.

Constand, who has agreed to be named in reports, said the decision shows no one is above the law.

Cosby, who is serving a prison sentence, can now ask the state Supreme Court to consider his appeal.

Dozens of women have accused Cosby, 82, who was once best known for a family-friendly brand of comedy that presented him as the lovable father in the 1980s television series The Cosby Show, of sexual assault over several decades.

-AAP