The former clerk, Sean M. Gerlich, asserts that the department violated his rights.
Women still worry about retaliation, she said, asserting that the department that handles harassment accusations is largely ineffective.
It is also said to assert that the department has carried out the policies without reaching out adequately to minority neighborhoods.
The executive director of the alliance, Michael J. Mudd, said in a telephone interview that the Energy Department letter was wrong in asserting that the department had to take public comments on the environmental statement into account before it could move forward.
And the commissioner of the state's Department of Health, which licenses and monitors adult day care operations, asserts that the department is moving aggressively to close loopholes in the statewide program to prevent another case like Parkshore from happening.
The defendants assert that the department's position is a sharp departure from earlier government views on the responsibilities of auto lenders and car dealers under fair-credit laws.
In a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft, the lawyer asserted that unless the department removed itself from the matter, any effort to prosecute Mr. Torricelli would be seen as an attempt by Republicans to wrest control of the Senate.
The department asserted that the panel's research was slipshod and its conclusions recklessly unfair.
Bill Malloy, head of the Met's wardrobe department, asserted that the workload has become larger and more harried in recent years.
But in a statement he plans to release on Sunday, President Clinton asserts that the housing department has clear legal authority to finance the program, which he contends will help prevent "an untold number of gun accidents, suicides and crimes".
