U.S. Justices Let Stand Suit by Holocaust Revisionist : Courts: Legal action contends city and Jewish groups conspired to prevent man from airing his views at conference.

An 8-year-old legal action in which a Holocaust revisionist charged that the city of Los Angeles and local Jewish groups conspired to prevent him from airing his views at a conference has been given new life by the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to hear arguments in the 1st Amendment case.

The high court, without comment, this week let stand the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to overrule a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit by Holocaust revisionist David McCalden. He claimed that Jewish groups used “extortionist threats” to oust him from a California Library Assn. conference in 1984. Viviana McCalden pushed forward with her husband’s case after his death two years ago.

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office and Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies said McCalden’s efforts will fail when the protracted legal battle returns to federal court in Los Angeles.

David McCalden’s allegations, Hier suggested, are as bogus as his claims that the Nazi murder of millions of Jews in the 1930s and 1940s was a hoax.

“I have full confidence that all of the organizations will be fully vindicated when this goes to court,” Hier said. “On the material aspects of the case, we are fully confident the lawsuit will be thrown out. The facts as he presents them are not the facts at all.”

McCalden accused city officials and groups of unjustly pressuring the California Library Assn. to cancel two contracts allowing him to present an exhibit and seminar on his views at the group’s 1984 conference in Los Angeles.

The Wiesenthal Center, the American Jewish Committee and other groups reacted with complaints to the Los Angeles City Council and the library group. The City Council passed a unanimous resolution requesting that McCalden be removed from the program and severed the city’s participation in the event. The library association provided the Wiesenthal Center and the American Jewish Committee with facilities to present their own Holocaust program.

McCalden claimed that his program was canceled because of threats of violence and disruption. He also claimed that the library association was influenced by warnings from Los Angeles police that McCalden had received death threats, and that police would not be able to protect him during the conference.

“There is no 1st Amendment right to intimidate by threats of violence or to magnify threats of violence by refusing to provide police protection,” attorneys for McCalden wrote in their brief to the high court. “Nor is there a 1st Amendment right to intentionally organize a violent demonstration or to plan disruption of a conference to prevent someone from speaking.”

Hier and other Jewish leaders said they applied intense political pressure to oppose McCalden, but denied making threats of violence. Such allegations are “nonsense,” Hier said.

“Calling a city councilman to express my indignation is a constitutional right every American has,” Hier said, noting the Wiesenthal Center’s record of endorsing nonviolent protest. “If he was threatened, he certainly was not threatened by us.”

Deputy City Atty. Marcia Kamine said the City Council had a firm legal basis for its actions.

“The facts are that the city of Los Angeles has an absolute right to freedom of speech, and it should not be punished for exercising that freedom,” Kamine said. “We have a right to say: ‘Come on, Mr. McCalden, you don’t know whereof you speak.’ ”

Hier said similar revisionist challenges to the Holocaust will be vigorously opposed.