Mann Act

On Tuesday evening, his legal team filed a motion casting the prosecution under the Mann Act as racist — something prosecutors have denied in previous hearings.

The music mogul is charged with three federal crimes — racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and violating the Mann Act — and has pleaded not guilty to each of them.

However, the appeals court ruled there was "sufficient evidence to support each of Kelly's convictions, including for the state and federal violations underlying his Mann Act convictions."

In 1912, Johnson was arrested for crossing state lines with a white sex worker in his car and accused of violating the 1910 Mann Act, a racist law that was born from growing fears of “white slavery” across the nation.

Kelly was convicted of eight counts of the Mann Act, which was passed in 1910 and sought to criminalize what’s now known as human trafficking.