LOS ANGELES - The California Science Center will start the new year defending itself in court for canceling a documentary film attacking Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

A lawsuit alleges that the state-owned center in Los Angeles improperly bowed to pressure from the Smithsonian Institution, as well as e-mailed complaints from University of Southern California professors and others.

It contends that the center violated both the First Amendment and a contract to rent the museum’s Imax Theater when it canceled the screening of “Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record.’’

The suit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by the American Freedom Alliance, a Los Angeles-based group described by senior fellow Avi Davis as a nonprofit, nonpartisan “think tank and activist network promoting Western values and ideals.’’

The AFA seeks punitive damages and compensation for financial losses, as well as a declaration from the court that the center violated the Constitution and cannot refuse the group the right to rent its facilities for future events.

The AFA had planned an Oct. 25 screening of two films at the museum - one a short Imax movie called “We are Born of Stars,’’ which favors Darwin’s theory; the other, “Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record,’’ a feature-length documentary that criticizes Darwin and promotes intelligent design.

Intelligent design is the theory that an intelligent being, rather than impersonal forces such as Darwinian natural selection, is responsible for shaping life on earth. An overwhelming majority of scientists and science and natural history museums consider the theory of evolution to have been proved beyond a doubt by genetic and fossil evidence.

Critics of intelligent design have dismissed it as a superficially scientific cloak for the straightforwardly religious belief known as Creationism that’s anchored in a literal reading of the biblical Book of Genesis.

The AFA’s Davis said his group has no position on Darwinism and intelligent design but is concerned that debate is being stifled by the scientific establishment.

During the fall, the AFA organized a series of public events, including the film screening, geared to the 2009 bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of his landmark work, “On the Origin of Species.’’

On Oct. 5, the science center, one of 165 national affiliates of the Smithsonian that enjoy special access to loans from its massive collection, received an alert - and a complaint - from Harold Closter, director of the Smithsonian’s affiliates program.

Closter gave the science center the heads-up about a news release that had been issued not by the AFA but by the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that promotes intelligent design and whose researchers are featured in “Darwin’s Dilemma.’’

In an e-mail that’s an exhibit in the lawsuit, he wrote that the news release wrongly implied that the California Science Center is “a West Coast branch of the Smithsonian, and that the film showing is a Smithsonian event.’’ Closter asked science center officials to correct the error but did not mention canceling the screening.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.