The cash-starved public defender’s office in Baton Rouge faces “chronic underfunding,” a federal lawsuit contends, a situation that has led to poor people arrested in connection with crimes being placed on a “waiting list,” leaving them in jail without access to lawyers.

The class-action lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in New Orleans by the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that Louisiana relies on a “dysfunctional funding scheme” to pay for its public defender program. The system, unique in the nation, depends in great part on fees assessed on traffic tickets. Critics call the funding source highly unreliable.

Without access to a lawyer, the lawsuit says, the plaintiffs in the suit, Darwin Yarls Jr., Leroy Shaw Jr. and Douglas Brown, who were arrested on separate felony charges, had no one to challenge the arrest and bail conditions, investigate the charges or negotiate with prosecutors.

The suit follows a declaration on Monday by the Orleans Public Defenders office that it would begin to refuse some felony cases — including attempted murder, some kinds of rape and armed robbery — because it was underfunded and overloaded with cases.