San Diego

The California Supreme Court, under the new leadership of Chief Justice Malcolm Lucas, on Thursday dropped review of a San Diego free speech case previously accepted for hearing under the Rose Bird court.

Under a new court rule approved by voters in 1986, the Supreme Court can reject previously accepted appeals as “improvidently granted.”

The court refused to review the case of a political theater group, “Playing for Real Theatre,” which sued Horton Plaza Associates for forbidding a performance of a skit about bombing in El Salvador.

The plaintiffs said the trial court in San Diego had no power to impose an order forbidding the performance because the order amounted to an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech. A divided 4th District Court of Appeal last year upheld the trial court.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the group’s appeal in an October decision.

But with Bird and two other justices, Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin, leaving the court after their defeat at the polls in November, the new majority on the court refused to hear the appeal.

The Court of Appeal ruling will be allowed to stand but it can only be applied to this case and is not to be used as legal precedent in other rulings, the court noted.