Attorneys who defended Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that temporarily outlawed same-sex marriage in California, pleaded with a federal appeals court Wednesday to keep under wraps a video recording of the trial that declared the law unconstitutional.

Charles Cooper, founding member of the Washington litigation boutique Cooper & Kirk, argued in a 74-page brief filed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco got it wrong in July when he ordered the tapes of the 2010 trial released. The Ninth Circuit temporarily stayed that order Aug. 11 pending an expedited appeal.