Activists filed a lawsuit accusing Dallas County of unconstitutionally detaining poor people prior to trial just because they can't afford bail, mirroring the case that overhauled the Harris County bail system last year.

The ACLU of Texas, Texas Fair Defense Project and Civil Rights Corps--the latter two groups who led the landmark bail case in Harris County--filed the suit late Sunday, representing six people sitting in jail for inability to pay bail ranging from $500 to $50,000.

Attorneys say the Dallas suit is part of "a continuation of efforts to end wealth-based bail detention in Texas and across the nation."

Defendants include the Dallas County, the sheriff, all judges and all magistrates.

"No person should be kept in a cage just because she doesn't have enough money to make a payment," said Civil Rights Corps attorney Elizabeth Rossi. "The decision to throw a person who is presumed innocent in a jail cell is a serious one. And a person's access to money should not be the only factor that determines whether she is free or is in jail."

The case presents the same arguments that led a federal judge to rule last April that Harris County's bail system violated the U.S. Constitution's equal protection and due process guarantees. The main problem, U.S. Chief District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal found then: Harris County magistrates and judges had failed to meaningfully consider a person's ability to pay when setting their bail, which the Constitution requires. It's the same allegation the civil rights groups lobbed in Dallas.

The civil rights groups in the Dallas case, however, have taken the case one step further this time: They are not only representing misdemeanor defendants arrested on low-level charges, but also felony defendants arrested on violent charges.

The move represents a departure from the Harris County case, whose plaintiffs included two single mothers arrested for driving with an invalid license and failure to identify to a police officer respectively, and one man arrested for shoplifting toiletries and light fixtures from a Walmart.

In Dallas, Shakena Watson is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, with bail set at $15,000; and Erriyah Banks is charged with assault of a public servant and theft of property under $25,000 with two prior convictions. Her bail is set at $50,000. Both say in affidavits that they are unemployed, can't pay the bail amount and weren't asked if they could. Banks said she had to get home to take care of her mom, while Watson said she was in the middle of applying for community college.

Dallas County's bail system appears to present significantly longer delays for both misdemeanor and felony defendants than in Harris County, where officials have justified concerns about the county's rigid bail schedule by touting the speed of its judicial system. It does not appear Dallas County can raise the same defense.

According to the lawsuit, misdemeanor arrestees must wait four to ten days before their first "theoretical opportunity" to contest their bail amount before a judge, compared to Harris County's one to three. Felony defendants must wait two to three weeks if they waive indictment--a more formal set of charges--or even two to three months if they don't waive indictment. That's again compared to a matter of days in Harris County. The attorneys describe the opportunity to contest bail in Dallas as "theoretical" because defendants aren't actually brought before the judge unless they're pleading guilty, attorneys allege.

Meanwhile, wealthy defendants charged with any crime are able to get back to their lives immediately after posting bail.

"The situation in (the) Dallas County Jail is a crisis," Trisha Trigilio, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement. "Hundreds of people are locked in jail every day because they can't afford money bail—while wealthier people charged with the same offense go free. This system is unfair and it's unconstitutional. It's time for county officials to treat this problem with the urgency it deserves."

The civil rights attorneys are asking a federal judge to block Dallas County from operating a "wealth-based detention system" that fails to consider inmates' ability to pay, as well as failing to consider non-financial conditions of release.

The Dallas County Sheriff's Department declined comment, while the chief magistrate and the presiding judge over the criminal district courts did not immediately return requests for comment.

Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price told the Dallas Morning News that the county had been expecting a lawsuit like this one--but added the county was amid bail reform already.

Price noted that the county if moving towards at formal risk assessment tool to be used by judges to set bail.

"I recognize the tenets of the lawsuit," Price said. "You've got to have the instruments to talk about the issue of public safety, which is first and foremost, and not to indenture yourself to a debtors' prison."