New York City taxi The New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission chose the Nissan NV200 as the “Taxi of Tomorrow.”

New York City taxicab medallion holders are being unfairly forced to comply with regulations not imposed upon ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft and that those constraints are causing them to lose business, a lawyer representing New York credit unions argued Tuesday before an appeals court.

The group of plaintiffs, which also include taxicab medallion holders, are challenging a district judge's March ruling that the medallion holders are not subject to disparate treatment because hailing a cab in the street is different from summoning a car through a computer application.

In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan of the Southern District of New York said that taxis effectively, have a “collective, government-sanctioned monopoly over one particular form of hailing” and that courts around the country have found that monopoly justifies subjecting the industry to a different set of regulations than ride-sharing services.