ALLENTOWN — Thousands of youth offenders could lose the ability to recover damages from a corrupt judge because the state Supreme Court has refused to preserve key juvenile records, attorneys for victims of the scandal say.

In an extraordinary legal filing, lawyers for the juveniles accused the high court of sabotaging the federal claims of children whose constitutional rights were violated by former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella. The high court's actions are "characteristic of its apparent and persistent insensitivity" to the needs of victims of what is likely "the most significant child-related judicial corruption scandal in the nation's history," the juveniles' lawyers asserted.

A spokesman for the Supreme Court declined comment. A federal judge has scheduled a hearing for Monday on the lawyers' request to halt the destruction of juvenile court records.

Ciavarella was charged earlier this year with taking millions of dollars in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in privately owned detention centers — tainting as many as 6,500 convictions in northeastern Pennsylvania's Luzerne County. Ciavarella and another judge pleaded guilty in February to fraud and face more than seven years in federal prison.

In overturning the convictions of youths who appeared in Ciavarella's courtroom, the Supreme Court ordered that the youths' court records be expunged, or destroyed.

Attorneys representing about 400 plaintiffs say that destruction of the records would jeopardize the ability of youths to prove their federal claims.

The lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Richard Caputo to order the preservation of a single, sealed copy of each youth's record.