LOS ANGELES -- Gov. Gray Davis' supporters face a difficult task in their bid to get the courts to reject thousands of signed petitions seeking a recall election, legal experts said Tuesday.

But attorneys and law professors who specialize in election law said the legal hearings and appeals could delay the election from the fall until March, when Davis supporters believe the Democratic governor has a better chance of beating back the recall.

"It is always an uphill battle when you have petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of people," said Fred Woocher, a lawyer who has represented Democrats in election cases. "The general principle is the court ... does everything it can to guard voters' referendum and recall rights." But he said court hearings and appeals could delay certification of the signatures and the date of the recall election.

Davis' backers are expected to be in court today to ask a judge to set a date to hear the lawsuit they filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court. The suit named as defendants Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, a Democrat, and top elections officials in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties. The plaintiffs are six residents requesting class-action status on behalf of voters and taxpayers.

Lawyers for Taxpayers Against the Governor's Recall said they hope to have a hearing within two weeks, and denied they were trying to delay the election.

Their class-action lawsuit seeks to invalidate petitions they claim were illegally obtained by out-of-state signature gatherers who were not registered to vote in California or lied about their residency to register to vote.

The suit also claims circulators didn't always witness signatures, as they attest to doing when they sign and submit petitions.

Monica Getz, a spokeswoman for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, who bankrolled the signature-gathering process and is a gubernatorial candidate, denied the charges.

The recall effort has been driven by discontent over the state's record budget deficit and recent energy crisis.

Recall proponents announced Monday they had collected more than 1.6 million signatures, almost twice the 897,158 needed to place the issue on the ballot.

Getz said county elections officials have validated more than 400,000 signatures, and called the lawsuit "another attempt to derail the democratic process."

Attorneys and law professors said the suit filed by Davis' supporters is more likely to score points in the court of public opinion than in a court of law.

"It's all done for political and public relations purposes rather than on a legal basis," said Stephen Barnett, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, law school.

While individual petition circulators could be charged with election law violations, Loyola law professor Richard L. Hasen predicted the courts wouldn't "punish the voters" for the "sins of the circulators" by throwing out the recall petitions.

"The California courts talk about zealously protecting the people's right to direct democracy," he said.

Paul Kiesel, one of the lawyers who filed the suit, said he was "very confident" the court would throw out the petitions.

To do otherwise, he said, would reward those who "illegally" circulated the petitions. He claimed the law is clear on the legal requirements for circulators.

But Hasen said the California law is unconstitutional. He said it violates a 1999 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Colorado law requiring that initiative circulators be registered to vote. The court said the requirement violated the circulators' First Amendment right to free speech.

The Supreme Court only addressed initiative petitions, but Hasen and other law professors said the courts likely would apply the same ruling to recall petitions.

"We are dealing with a First Amendment right, so any restriction has to pass constitutional scrutiny," said Elizabeth Garrett, a University of Southern California law professor. "There is no good reason to require petition circulators to be registered to vote."

Hasen said a 1982 court ruling in another California case involving an initiative petition found errors -- like preprinting the dates when the petitions were signed -- and didn't invalidate them.

Floyd Feeney, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, also said judges who stand for election themselves are reluctant to take an action that might anger voters.

"One judge called (ruling) on an initiative after the voters (have spoken) ... voting with an alligator in the bathtub," he said. "I think the alligator is probably in the bathtub here."