The Florida Supreme Court was asked Thursday to let a lawsuit proceed in circuit court on whether Republican legislative leaders violated new redistricting standards by sharing critical data and proposed maps with political consultants.

But a lawyer for the state House and Senate said the challenge by voters groups including the Florida League of Women Voters, Common Cause and National Council of  La Raza, should be dismissed.

Former Justice Raoul Cantero, representing the Legislature, said the state constitution allows only the Supreme Court to rule on the state’s redistricting plan — and validated the once-a-decade rewrite last year.

Cantero said that allowing the voters’ group challenge to proceed “opens up the possibility for serial redistricting litigation.”

Justice Charles Canady agreed.

“There can be a succession of claims and this can go on and on and on,” Canady warned. “We can be litigation the redistricting plan for the next decade.”

But Justice Barbara Pariente said that the voter-approved Fair District amendments to the constitution, which prohibit districts from being drawn to help or hurt incumbents, have complicated the existing constitutional standards for redistricting.

The “intent” of legislators is a factor courts must consider. That’s not likely possible to determine in the narrow time-frame given the Supreme Court for review of redistricting plans, she said.

“It may be a little messy until we get the law straightened out,” Pariente said.

The voters’ groups want a lower court to determine whether the Senate and congressional maps are invalid, because Republican leaders violated the Fair Districts standards. Court documents in that case filed in Leon County Circuit Court show that emails were exchanged between aides to Senate President Don Gaetz, House Speaker Will Weatherford and consultants who analyzed proposed maps.

The emails also show that in 2010, Rich Heffley, a Florida Republican Party consultant advising Gaetz, then the Senate’s redistricting chairman, organized a “brainstorming” meeting at the state party headquarters in Tallahassee. Other documents in the case show that Sen. Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, and Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, who are both angling for Senate presidency in coming years, emailed district information to consultants for review.

The state House plans to join a pair of Florida members of Congress in appealing a federal judge’s ruling that upheld a new, voter-approved standard for lawmakers when they draw congressional and legislative boundaries next year, House Speaker Dean Cannon said Thursday.

The move extends a battle between the Republican-ruled Legislature and the Democratic-allied Fair Districts campaign, which spearheaded the effort leading to voter approval of Florida constitutional amendments 5 and 6 last fall. Cannon, R-Winter Park,  and U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, and Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, argue that Amendment 6 violates the U.S. Constitution by attempting to make state law apply to a federal matter.

U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro rejected the lawsuit earlier this month. But Cannon said Thursday that Ungaro is wrong.

 He drew on a federal court’s two-decade old ruling that in Florida, voter-approved term limits could not apply to members of Congress, in making the case for appeal.

“The federal court said, ‘no it doesn’t apply to congressional seats because Article 1, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution says only Congress and the federal constitution can prescribe limits like that,” Cannon said. “And we think the exact same argument applies here.”

The Legislature must draw new districts in time for the 2012 elections to reflect 2010 census data. The process in Florida and other states has historically been dominated by partisanship and political considerations. But Amendments 5 and 6 state that districts cannot be drawn to favor incumbents or political parties and must be compact and adhere to existing city, county and geographical boundaries “where feasible.”

The amendment also states that districts must not deny minorities the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.

Fair Districts and its supporters have called on Cannon to end the legal attack on the amendment — approved by 63 percent of voters. But Cannon said the thousands of dollars in taxpayer money spent challenging the measure is needed.

“This lawsuit is not about any specific map, or even this specific year,” Cannon said. “It’s about defining the responsibility of our state Legislature under the federal constitution.”

But Dan Gelber, a former Democratic legislator who now represents Fair Districts, said “it is offensive to spend taxpayer money to fight your own constituents.” He noted that Florida taxpayers are paying for legal costs on both sides — for the Secretary of State to defend the new state standards, and for the House seeking to overturn it.

“It shows are desperate the Republican-ruled Legislature is to retain their ability to draw district lines the way they want,” Gelber said.

Cannon, though, assured that lawmakers will abide by the Amendment 5 and 6 standards when they begin line-drawing as early as next month. Cannon acknowledged that it could prove months before a ruling emerges from 11th U.S. District Court of Appeals.

Supporters of the Fair Districts constitutional amendments guiding redistricting blasted Florida legislative leaders Tuesday for what some called a ”charade” of more than two-dozen public hearings scheduled to begin next week.

Former Sen. Dan Gelber, a Miami Beach Democrat and lawyer now representing Fair Districts, was joined by the Florida NAACP, the state’s League of Women Voters, and Democracia, an Hispanic voters’ organization, in denouncing the Legislature’s slow-developing time frame to redraw political boundaries for state House, Senate and congressional districts.

Twenty-six public hearings are scheduled through the summer, including an Aug. 16 session at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. But the discussions are not intended to focus on line-drawing.

Instead, the Legislature won’t begin drawing maps in earnest until January. With legal challenges, Gelber and others said it was likely Floridians and candidates won’t know their districts until close to the beginning on candidate qualifying in June.

“That these are transparent hearings, that’s just a sham,” said Deirdre Macnab of the League of Women Voters.

The organizations have written House Speaker Dean Cannon, Senate President Mike Haridopolos, and House and Senate redistricting chairs criticizing the schedule and urging that they drop what critics call a gag order in which the letter said lawmakers have been warned they “should not make public statements about redistricting lest they betray intent to engage in political favoritism.”

The organizations also called on U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, and Corrine Brown, a Jacksonville Democrat, to drop their lawsuit challenging the Fair Districts amendments, approved by voters last fall. The measures prohibit lawmakers from drawing district boundaries to help one party or individual incumbents.

Taxpayers are picking up the legal tab for both sides in the lawsuit, which is scheduled for oral arguments in Miami federal court in July.

“It’s time we stop spending taxpayer funds to defeat the purpose of the voters,” said Leon Russell of the NAACP.

UPDATE: Sen. Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, responded to the Fair Districts criticism, saying all Floridians’ “viewpoints are heard,” in the process. He also urged critics to draw their own versions of the maps, a challenge Haridopolos earlier issued.