SAN FRANCISCO -- Three advocacy groups sued the state in San Francisco Superior Court on Tuesday to challenge the transfer of prison inmates to out-of-state institutions.

The lawsuit claims the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation violated a state administrative procedures law by failing to give public notice and an opportunity for public comment on rules for implementing the program.

The suit asks the court to suspend the transfers until the notice and comment procedures are followed.

Ajay Krishnan, a lawyer for the groups, said, "Before an inmate in a California prison is transferred thousands of miles from his or her family, both the individual and the family are entitled to know - at a bare minimum - what rules are being applied.

"These transfers impose significant hardships on prisoners and their families," Krishnan said.

The plaintiff groups are Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and the Asian Law Caucus, all based in San Francisco.

The transfer program was initiated in an emergency proclamation by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006 to help alleviate severe overcrowding in the state's prisons and was incorporated into a law passed by the Legislature last year.

Department spokesman Gordon Hinkle said 3,926 of California's 170,000 inmates are currently in involuntary transfers to prisons in Arizona, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee. About 700 others have transferred voluntarily.

The defendants in the case are the corrections department and corrections secretary Matthew Cate.

Hinkle said, "Transferring inmates out of state is an important part of our commitment to ease overcrowding and protect the safety and wellbeing of the officers, inmates and public."

Hinkle said the program "has stood up to legal challenges and scrutiny in the past," including a challenge by correctional officers to Schwarzenegger's emergency proclamation. A state appeals court in Sacramento upheld the proclamation in June.