MINNEAPOLIS — The U.S. Justice Department has accused Chaska, Minnesoata-based KleinBank of “redlining,” or unlawfully structuring its mortgage lending business to avoid serving minority neighborhoods around the Twin Cities.

In a federal lawsuit filed late Friday, lawyers from the department’s civil rights division said KleinBank, one of Minnesota’s largest community banks, denied residents in predominantly minority neighborhoods the chance to apply for or obtain residential real estate loans from 2010 to at least 2015.

“KleinBank’s discriminatory practices … have been intentional and willful, and implemented with reckless disregard for the rights of individuals on the basis of their race and/or national origin,” the complaint said.

KleinBank officials denied the charges, saying they have been cooperating with Justice Department officials for more than a year.

“The government’s claim of ‘redlining’ has absolutely no basis in fact,” Doug Hile, KleinBank president and CEO, said in a written statement. “To the contrary, KleinBank has an established history of responding to all credit requests with a commitment to fairness and equal opportunity. This history is undisputed.”

According to the lawsuit, a statistical analysis of KleinBank’s loan applications revealed that the bank served residents of majority-white census tracts “to a significantly greater extent” than those from majority-minority census tracts.

Of 5,837 residential loans analyzed by the department, just 62 applications — or slightly more than 1 percent of residential loans — involved property in tracts where minorities accounted for the majority of residents. By comparison, other lenders generated more than 5 percent of residential loan applications in minority tracts, the lawsuit says.

In order to avoid business in minority communities, KleinBank created a “horseshoe-shaped” market that includes the majority-white suburbs and avoids areas in the Twin Cities “that have a higher proportions of minority populations,” the lawsuit says. The lawsuit notes that KleinBank’s market excludes 78 of the 97 majority-minority tracts in the metropolitan area.

Hile said the government’s argument that KleinBank has a proactive duty to expand into Minneapolis and St. Paul by opening new branches in minority neighborhoods is a “baseless and unprecedented reach by the government.”

Hile said Minneapolis and St. Paul “are not part of KleinBank’s market, and we have virtually no business there. These are highly competitive markets and they are comprehensively served by well-established financial institutions with numerous branches and many years of history.”

KleinBank’s describes itself as the state’s largest family-run bank, with its business dating to 1907. The bank has 21 branches, mostly in third-ring Twin Cities suburbs, and listed assets of $1.8 billion as of March 2016.

Attorneys from the department’s civil rights division and housing and civil enforcement section have asked for an order prohibiting further discrimination and are seeking unspecified monetary damages for victims and a civil penalty against the bank “in order to vindicate the public interest.”

From 2010 to 2014, the department obtained more than $1.4 billion in settlements through similar actions, according to the department’s most recent report to Congress.

“Redlining produces an unequal and unlevel playing field for borrowers in minority neighborhoods,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Cases like this one demonstrate the Justice Department’s strong commitment to hold banks accountable for continuing and perpetuating historic trends of inequality in residential mortgage lending.”