As debate renewed over the National Security Agency’s surveillance program, dozens of Democrats in the House of Representatives backed a lawsuit filed in New York that challenges the government’s program of wiretapping without warrants.

In a brief submitted to U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Wednesday, 72 members of Congress requested that a federal judge in Manhattan, Gerard Lynch, declare the program unconstitutional and illegal.

The brief is in support of a recent lawsuit that challenges the NSA’s surveillance program on behalf of a group of lawyers who suspect their conversations with clients may have been monitored. The brief also was filed in federal court in Michigan, where a similar lawsuit is pending. The Bush administration has defended the program as an important tool in the fight against terrorism.

Last week, it was reported that several phone companies had turned over millions of call records to the NSA.

With the brief, 71 Democrats and an independent congressman of Vermont, Bernard Sanders, claim President Bush overreached his authority by allowing the NSA to eavesdrop on phone conversations between people in America and terror suspects abroad.

“We emphasize that we fully support the efforts of our government generally to gather information concerning terrorist groups and to seek, by all legitimate means, to interdict their efforts to attack Americans,” the brief read. “We only say that insofar as the NSA’s program of electronic surveillance directed at Americans is concerned, there is a mechanism created by legislation enacted by Congress and signed by the President that delineates procedures whereby such activities may be initiated and maintained. No one – no President or other citizen – is above the law.”

In 1978, Congress established a court that can issue warrants to the executive branch for wiretapping. Since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the NSA has eavesdropped on certain types of phone calls without applying to the court, the New York Times reported in December.

A civil rights group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed the lawsuit in January.

The brief from the lawmakers focuses on an alleged breach of the separation of powers by Mr. Bush. It examines the intent of Congress in enacting a 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Citing writings by America’s founding fathers, the brief also includes an analysis of the earliest notions of the limits of presidential authority in this country.

“I don’t know that the program should be halted,” a New York City congressman who signed on to the brief, Jerrold Nadler, said in a telephone interview. “The main question is not even wiretapping. The main question is whether you can have the president doing things in secret and ignoring all our laws.”

Other U.S. representatives from New York whose names are on the brief are: Gary Ackerman, Maurice Hinchey, Carolyn Maloney, Major Owens, Charles Rangel, Jose Serrano, and Louise Slaughter.

An attorney, Barry Coburn, with the Washington, D.C., law firm of Trout Cacheris PLLC, was involved in preparing the brief.