LOS ANGELES State prisoners with hepatitis C aren't getting the health care they need, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday that adds to complaints about the medical treatment of California inmates.

The filing in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles estimates that as many as 40 percent of the state's inmates are infected. About 30,000 are expected to report difficulty getting adequate care, which is why the suit seeks class-action status, said Shawn Khorrami, the prisoners' lawyer.

"This is a nasty, nasty disease," Khorrami said. "We don't allow this kind of punishment in America, where someone has a disease and we have them suffer from it and have all kinds of problems going forward in their lives just because they've committed a crime."

The filing comes on the heels of collapsed settlement talks in a different lawsuit seeking to reduce the prison population. The new lawsuit estimates the state houses 190,000 inmates, but the state says its prisons hold about 159,000.

At issue is whether overcrowding violates inmates' rights, leading to inadequate health care, among other things. A trial is set for November. If the state loses, a federal judicial panel could order inmates to be released early.

The lead plaintiff in the hepatitis lawsuit is Kevin Jackson, an inmate in California State Prison at Solano. The filing says despite a 2007 diagnosis of an advanced stage of the disease, he was repeatedly refused treatment.

Hepatitis C is a chronic, blood-borne infection that can be life-threatening if untreated. It is often linked to infected drug needles, prison tattoos or body piercing with dirty equipment.

About 20 percent of people who get hepatitis C clear it out of their system naturally. Without treatment, one in four will suffer liver failure or develop liver cancer.

Luis Patino, a spokesman for the federal receiver in charge of health care in California's prisons, said the filing is redundant to the previous lawsuits.

"The receivership is already working on an initiative to mitigate and to work with hepatitis C," Patino said, noting that officials are pulling together funding for centers to improve health care.

Still, the problem has persisted, Khorrami noted.

"To the extent that we're in no better shape now than we were several years ago, there's no redundancy in this filing," he said. "Nothing has happened."

Copyright 2008 Associated Press