When conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh pilloried participants in a liberal legal conference at Yale Law School as “absolute blithering dunces” and accused them of trying to “rewrite the Constitution,” he probably wasn’t fishing for a speaking invitation.

However, the group that organized the conference, the Yale chapter of the American Constitution Society, extended just such an invite to Mr. Limbaugh on Friday. The group also sent the radio host a copy of the current Constitution and assured him they are not seeking to replace it.

“It’s the same one that everyone looks at and interprets,” said a Yale law student who serves as a spokeswoman for the group, Karen Dunn.

Earlier this month, about 600 lawyers, law students, and judges gathered in New Haven to discuss “The Constitution in 2020.” Conference organizers, who call themselves progressives, billed the event as an effort “to reclaim the Constitution for progressive values.”

In a blistering broadcast last week, Mr. Limbaugh drew from accounts on the Power Line blog to paint the conference as an attempt by leftists to upend America’s founding document.

“A bunch of liberal elitists gathered up at Yale to have this little pretend new constitution,” he warned. “While there are those of us who are devoted to defending the current U.S. Constitution, there are a bunch of leftists and liberals out there that are toying around with the idea of rewriting it and changing it.”

Mr. Limbaugh compared the scholars at the meeting to Miss America contestants voicing banal concerns about world peace. “This is left-wing hand wringing. You know, how unequal and unfair everything is and the Constitution is going to make everything equal and fair,” he said.

The talk show host said participants in the meeting wanted to create constitutional rights to education, health care, child care, and police protection. “The premise behind it is an absolute joke, but I mean these people are dead serious,” he said.

Ms. Dunn, who is a former aide to Senator Clinton, said the idea for the conference actually came from Reagan-era conservatives who, in the 1980s, drafted a vision for “the Constitution in 2000.” One panel at the Yale conference this month was entitled “toward Constitutional reconstruction” and another spoke of “making the Constitution new.”

“We’re happy to see Rush Limbaugh believes we are a force to be reckoned with,” Ms. Dunn said.

A Yale law professor who took part, Bruce Ackerman, called Mr. Limbaugh’s assessment of the event “just ignorant.” Mr. Ackerman said that while some at the conference proposed finding rights to education and other benefits in the Constitution, he focused on legislative ways to promote citizenship, such as by giving every citizen 50 “patriot dollars” to make a campaign contribution, or giving every young adult an $80,000 nest egg to do with as he or she pleases, as a means of addressing inequality of wealth. The Yale professor said such proposals are market-based and should appeal to conservatives.

Another law professor who spoke at the session, Burt Neuborne of New York University, declined to reply to Mr. Limbaugh’s critique. “Rush Limbaugh talking about the Constitution is such a joke,” Mr. Neuborne said. However, he said he cautioned others at the conference not to seek to use the courts to propound constitutional rights the public does not embrace. “Whenever great changes take place in a culture, it isn’t because of judges, it’s because judges strike a moral chord,” he said.

The legal conference was co-sponsored by a Washington think tank that is home to many former officials of President Clinton’s administration, the Center for American Progress, and by an organization funded by financier George Soros, the Open Society Institute.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Limbaugh did not respond yesterday to a call seeking comment on the Yale invitation.