Attorneys general from California, 17 other states and the District of Columbia are challenging U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to deny political asylum to virtually all victims of domestic violence or gang violence in their home countries.

In papers filed Friday in federal court in Washington, D.C., Attorney General Xavier Becerra and his colleagues said Sessions’ decision to overturn legal protections for thousands of immigrants “stripped away an essential lifeline for victims of gender-based harm” and conflicted with U.N. refugee policies.

Sessions’ Justice Department includes U.S. immigration courts, giving him the power to overturn their rulings. He has exercised that power with unprecedented frequency, most notably in his June 11 decision to reverse a 2014 decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals allowing undocumented immigrants fleeing domestic violence to apply for asylum.

Asylum is available to those who can show they are likely to be persecuted in their homeland because of race, religion, nationality, political opinions or membership in a “particular social group.” Persecution can include abuse inflicted by private citizens that the government is unable or unwilling to prevent.

Immigration courts, and a number of federal courts including the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, have ruled in the past that domestic violence and gang violence are so pervasive in certain countries, particularly in Central America, that victims could be considered part of a social group that their government could not protect. Sessions rejected those conclusions.

“The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes — such as domestic violence or gang violence — or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim,” he wrote.

Moreover, the failure of local police to respond to a crime victim “does not necessarily mean that the government is unable or unwilling to control crime, any more than it would in the United States,” Sessions said. He said those fleeing private violence must show that their government “condoned the private actions or at least demonstrated a complete helplessness to protect the victims.”

His decision is binding on immigration judges unless it is overturned by federal courts, whose judges are appointed by the president.

In Friday’s filing, supporting a lawsuit previously filed by an asylum seeker, the states noted the widespread domestic and gang violence in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, homelands of large numbers of U.S. asylum applicants. They have been described as “war zones” with some of the world’s highest rates of murder, particularly murders of women, and domestic abuse, the states said.

Those facts demonstrate “the inability of multiple countries to protect women and targets of gang violence,” the court filing said. It said Sessions’ decision also contradicted state and federal policies to protect victims of domestic violence — such as a California law requiring employers to provide paid days off to such victims, and federal laws in 1994 and 2000 allowing victims of domestic abuse, and those who testify against their attackers, to apply for special U.S. visas.

“The administration’s cruel policy arbitrarily closes our borders to refugees who seek asylum due to legitimate fears of violence in their home countries,” said District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine, lead author of the court filing.

He also said the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees considers domestic violence a legitimate basis for refugee status.

Even as the commissioner is declaring “a clear need for international protection” for such victims, the filing said, quoting a 2015 U.N. handbook, “the United States is turning these same women away.”

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko