An attorney for a coalition of New York City law enforcement unions on Tuesday asked a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to extend a stay of a lower court's order allowing the release of police disciplinary records, saying that officers and their families would be in danger if the records were made public.

The argument, which was rejected by a Manhattan federal judge last month, sought to pause, for weeks, the city's planned release of documents, after lawmakers earlier this year repealed the state's police secrecy law, known as 50-a.