Lawyers for fallen TV comedy actor Bill Cosby on Thursday asked the judge in his sexual assault retrial scheduled for next month to step aside. They argued that the judge could be seen as biased because his wife is a social worker who has described herself as an “activist and advocate for assault victims”.

Cosby’s team contends that some of Judge Steven O’Neill’s recent pretrial rulings could give the appearance he is being influenced by his wife’s work, particularly his decision last week to let prosecutors have up to five additional accusers testify. He allowed just one at the first trial.

O’Neill did not immediately rule on the request. He and his wife, Deborah, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Deborah O’Neill is a psychotherapist at the University of Pennsylvania and coordinates a team providing support and advocacy for student sexual assault victims. In 2012, she wrote her doctoral dissertation on acquaintance rape, the type of assault at issue in Cosby’s criminal case.

Last year, the star’s lawyers said, Deborah O’Neill gave money to a group linked to an organization that is planning a protest outside the forthcoming retrial.

Cosby, 80, has pleaded not guilty to charges he drugged and molested former Temple University athletics administrator Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. She has publicly identified herself, among dozens of women who emerged en masse in 2015 accusing the celebrity of sexual misconduct over decades. He has denied non-consensual sex and had not faced criminal charges before the current case.

Cosby’s first criminal trial, in which Constand was a key witness for the prosecution, ended in a hung jury last year. Jury selection in his retrial is scheduled to start on 2 April in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The defense is trying to get the judge also to ban court spectators in the public gallery from wearing badges or displaying slogans or carrying accessories that appear to be in support of Cosby’s accusers.

The judge on Monday refused the latest in a number of requests from the defense to delay the start of the trial.