TULSA, OKLA. ? A group of Tulsa County sex offenders has filed a federal lawsuit challenging new state laws about where they can live.

The lawsuit, filed on Friday, claims that hundreds of people on Oklahoma’s sex-offender registry are being forced to move from their homes, leave their jobs and stop attending their churches as a result of recently enacted state laws.

American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma Foundation attorney Tina Izadi asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order as well as preliminary and permanent injunctions stopping enforcement of the state laws and to declare them unconstitutional.

The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, lists Gov. Brad Henry, Oklahoma Atty. Gen. Drew Edmondson, Tulsa County Dist. Atty. Tim Harris, Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz and Tulsa Police Chief Dave Been, as well as a variety of state officials, as defendants.

The lawsuit says “the plaintiffs have been convicted of crimes – some for crimes that did not warrant any prison time – but they have paid the price and today live law-abiding lives as productive members of the community. Now they are being punished again.”

Izadi wrote in the lawsuit that plaintiffs who have lived in their homes for a substantial number of years were informed in August in letters from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections that they are in violation of a “zone of safety” provision in state law.

Those who received the letters were told that within 30 days “they must move or face arrest and prosecution of a felony.”

In this year’s legislative session, Oklahoma’s Sex Offender Registration Act was amended to bar sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of any public or private school, playground, park or licensed child-care center. Henry approved the changes June 7, and they took effect immediately.

Tulsa police have said the change left only about 8 percent of the city available for registered sex offenders to live.

State law also bars sex offenders from being within 300 feet of schools, child-care facilities, playgrounds or parks.

In combination, the provisions render “virtually all of the city of Tulsa uninhabitable for plaintiffs” and effectively banish them from the community, Izadi wrote.