Civil rights lawyers have filed a suit in federal court against the Fulton County sheriff's office alleging that women with psychological disturbances are being held for solitary confinement in filthy cells without access to the help provided to men in similar circumstances.

The Georgia Advocacy Office and the Southern Center for Human Rights filed the lawsuit seeking injunctive relief against Sheriff Ted Jackson and other officials charged with detaining women at the South Fulton Jail. The sheriff's public information officer said Thursday by email, “We are reserving comment at this time due to pending litigation.”

“This is an action to protect some of the most vulnerable women in the Fulton County Jail system from serious psychological harm, cruel and unusual conditions of confinement, and invidious discrimination,” said the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia Atlanta Division Wednesday. “Defendants incarcerate over 200 women at the South Fulton Municipal Regional Jail, a facility in Union City, Georgia, used to hold women prosecuted in Fulton County courts. Many of those women—at least half, by most estimates—experience psychiatric disabilities. Neither staffed nor trained to manage the large number of detainees experiencing psychiatric disabilities, Fulton County jailers respond to symptoms of mental illness by confining women with psychiatric disabilities in isolation cells for months on end.”