Contracts Rights and First Amendment Rights

We have had occasion to muse on this topic before, in the context of Valerie Plame Wilson’s suit, seeking a court order that would have permitted her to disclose in her autobiography certain facts already in the public record relating to her employment agreement with the C.I.A.  Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported on another context in which contracts rights and First Amendment rights could overlap. 

According to the report, The American Freedom Alliance is claiming that the California Science Center is violating its contractual and constitutional rights by canceling a scheduled screening of a film promoting intelligent design.  The film, “Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record,” explores the mystery of the so-called “Cambrian explosion,” in which it appears from the fossil record that numerous complex species suddenly emerged without the niceties of Darwinian evolution.  It is just one in a series of productions by Illustramedia, which based on its website, seems to produce only films relating to intelligent design.  The feature-length film, which based on the trailer looks like it has high production values, was to be screened at the Science Center’s IMAX theater on October 25th, together with a short pro-Darwin IMAX film, “We Are Born of Stars.”  

The American Freedom Alliance’s story is that the Science Center cancelled the screening in response to pressure from the Smithsonian Institute and from University of Southern California professors.  It seeks punitive damages, compensation for financial losses, a declaration that the Science Center violated the Constitution and apparently some form of prospective declaratory relief that would prevent the Science Center from refusing to rent its facilities to the AFA in the future.  The AFA claims not to have a dog in the fight between Darwinian evolutionary biology and intelligent design.  It simply wants to foster debate.  

The Science Center’s story is that it is entitled to cancel the contract because the AFA had violated the terms of the rental agreement by sending out promotional materials that were not submitted to the Science Center in advance as required.  The AFA says that the promotion issue is not the Science Center’s real reason for canceling the contract and this dishonesty, says the AFA, constitutes fraud, entitling it to punitive damages.

On October 14, a California Superior Court judge denied the AFA’s request for an order requiring the Science Center to host the event.  The screening took place the University of Southern California instead.  

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History became embroiled in a similar controversy in 2005 when it hosted a screening of a different film promoting intelligent design.  The Smithsonian did not bow to pressure from the scientific community to cancel the screening, but it did everything in its power to distance itself form the event.

[Jeremy Telman]