With yesterday’s decision by a state judge to deny permission to use Central Park for a large protest during the Republican National Convention, the losers in the case are left scrambling to organize the logistics for their protest this Sunday.

One group that is part of United for Peace and Justice, the coalition that sued the city last week for the right to use the park, said yesterday that its members might descend on the park on Sunday despite the judge’s ruling. But lawyers and leaders of the broader coalition said they would follow the law.

In her 13-page decision and order, a New York State Supreme Court justice, Jacqueline Silberman, wrote that United for Peace and Justice had waited too long to bring the suit, “unfairly prejudicing” the city.

United for Peace and Justice “simply cannot be heard to bring a constitutional challenge to a march-and-rally plan it publicly and voluntarily agreed to on July 21, 2004 – more than one month ago,” she wrote, noting also that even after the group reneged on its plan on August 10, it needed another week to bring the suit to court.

Like U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley, who denied a similar request by the National Council of Arab Americans on Monday, Judge Silberman found that the city had not rejected the permit based on United for Peace and Justice’s desire to criticize the government in its rally. Instead, she found that the city had applied appropriate “content-neutral” standards to its decision.

She also seems to have rejected United for Peace and Justice’s notion that Central Park is New York’s “town hall,” as many protest groups have claimed. She suggested that the problems organizers have with the site agreed upon in July, West and Chambers streets, were “largely of their own making” and could have been solved with more time spent on organizing and less on fighting with the city.

“The choices among three park sites (contained within Central Park) and a single site along West Street cannot reasonably be viewed as choices which the State Constitution would distinguish,” she wrote.

Lawyers for United for Peace and Justice said they were disappointed with the decision. Last night, they said they had not decided whether to file an appeal.

“Justice Silberman must be the only New Yorker who doesn’t think there’s a difference between the West Side Highway and Central Park,” said the lead attorney for United for Peace and Justice, Jeffrey Fogel, of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, Leslie Cagan, said she was “unsurprised” but “disappointed” by the decision.

The city’s lawyers argued in court that the rally was impossible to set up in just four days, but the dispute over the use of the Great Lawn has centered on protecting the grass on the property. Between 1995 and 1997, the city spent $18.2 million restoring the Great Lawn, and has since maintained an internal management plan that restricts use of the lawn by large groups.

The city parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, reacted to the ruling with a statement emphasizing the importance of preserving the lawn. “Before the Great Lawn was restored, it was a barren, uninviting wasteland pockmarked by dirt, weeds and rocks. Today, it is a sweeping green carpet that provides a haven to those seeking a respite from New York City’s bustle,” Mr. Benepe said.

United for Peace and Justice met with the Police Department yesterday morning before the decision was announced, and then met again late into the evening to work out details of a march past Madison Square Garden that was to take place regardless of the site of the rally afterward. United for Peace and Justice officials described the meetings as smooth, but so far inconclusive.

United for Peace and Justice’s march permit allows marchers to congregate south of 22nd Street on between Fifth and Ninth avenues at 10 a.m. Sunday and march up Seventh Avenue past Madison Square Garden. Since the group has said repeatedly since August 10 that it will not use the site at West and Chambers streets, it and the police department will need to work out a site far enough away to allow all 250,000 marchers to file past the Garden, Ms. Cagan said. At this point, the police still plan to close the streets along the original march route, roughly 12th Avenue down to the intersection of Chambers and West streets.

Both United for Peace and Justice and city officials have said they long for a peaceful and orderly march.

“I want to ask New Yorkers to remember that whatever their political affiliations or views,” Mayor Bloomberg said, “we all have a vested interest in making sure that New York City is a good host.”

Even as United for Peace and Justice leaders worked with the police to create a peaceful event, other groups, like the anti-war coalition Not in Our Name, and the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, promised, “We’ll see you in the park.”

“We’re not calling on people to do civil disobedience,” an organizer for Not in Our Name, Tanya Mayo, told The New York Sun. “It’s our constitutional right to use that park. We’ll join thousands of people in the park,” she said. “We’ll be joining those people.” Not in Our Name is a member group of United for Peace and Justice.

Ms. Mayo did not say if her group would use an amplified sound system, or if its members would gather in groups of larger than 20, both of which require permits.

The communists, none of whom appeared to be older than 20, said in a press release yesterday that they would not only be in the park, but they would be wearing their “full color revolutionary banners, T-Shirts.” They appeared at a press conference after one called by United for Peace and Justice, wearing black T-shirts with red drawings and carried cardboard tubes with ragged red cloth stapled to them.

United for Peace and Justice filed for a permit in December 2003 and has been engaged in a dispute with the city government ever since. The press attention to the negotiations about a site for the rally played into the group’s message, enabling it to remain in the public eye and reiterate its stance opposing President Bush’s agenda and the Iraq War, which has sometimes seemed to be drowned out in the fight over Central Park and the lawn.

“In a way, the fight for the park has become larger than our overall message,” Ms. Cagan said.