The role U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit nominee Michael Arthur Delaney played in defending a New Hampshire private school from civil claims related to the sexual assault of a student dominated his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday morning. 

In 2014 a female student was sexually assaulted by an older male student at St. Paul’s, a prep school in Concord, New Hampshire. Delaney, a defense attorney in McLane Middleton’s education practice at the time, represented the school and in his response to a motion to keep the 16-year-old student anonymous during the proceeding he asked to put a gag order on the entire proceeding or reveal her identity.