A complaint filed in Sioux Falls federal court says some penitentiary inmates have been denied their right to a parole hearing. The case involves 17 inmates who received a life sentence before 1979 when a law creating the sentence of life without parole took effect.

The inmates argue that laws in effect when they were sentenced before 1979 allowed parole hearings.

The Board of Pardons and Paroles and its members are defendants.

The state denies the claims in its answer to the lawsuit and has asked the judge to dismiss it.