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.

A Leon County judge was wrong in ruling that Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-ruled Legislature violated the state constitution last year by ordering 3 percent payroll contributions from public employees in the Florida Retirement System, state lawyers said in a new filing with the Florida Supreme Court.

At stake in the case before justices: close to $2 billion in the budgets of the state, counties and school districts.

Lawyers for Scott and other state officials are appealing the March ruling. Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford at the time said the state’s action overran contractual rights granted public employees in 1974, when the pension plan was converted to a “noncontributory system” for workers.

But former Justice Raoul Cantero, now a private attorney representing the state in the case, argued in a 44-page brief filed with the court that Fulford’s order ”runs contrary to decades of precedent.”

“The Legislature’s decision to modify the FRS system was fully within its prerogatives because the right of public employees to collective bargaining does not override the Legislature’s appropriations power,” Cantero wrote.

Also at the center of the state’s appeal is Fulford’s interpretation of a 1981 state Supreme Court decision involving the Florida Sheriffs Association, which pivoted on the Legislature changing benefits for future state employment. 

Cantero argued that in the Sheriffs ruling, justices held that the Legislature could reduce the amount of benefits that would go to FRS members in the future.

 But Fulford concluded that employees currently in the pension system have a property right to a noncontributory plan and that nothing in the Sheriffs’ case authorizes the Legislature to “change the fundamental nature of the plan itself.”

The lawsuit was filed last summer against Scott and other state officials on behalf of 11 public employees who are members of the retirement system. Those suing include members of the Florida Education Association, AFL-CIO, America Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Fraternal Order of Police and Service Employees International Union.

There are 655,000 government workers in the FRS. The Supreme Court has not yet set a date for arguments in the case.

Scott and the Legislature last year used the $1.1 billion in pension fund payments to help close a yawning budget gap. The state’s 67 counties also saved about $600 million in pension payments by having employees contribute the 3 percent.

The same payments were incorporated into the $69.9 billion state budget set to take effect July 1.

If  justices uphold the lower court’s ruling, the state has said reserves would have to be deployed to cover the lost revenue.

As part of its appeal, the state also is arguing that Fulford exceeded her authority by ordering that payments be refunded to the public employees in the FRS.

Cantero, in the state’s appeal, acknowledged that the Legislature’s decision to require pension payments to close a budget hole was controversial. But he said that justices should affirm that such actions are within the power of lawmakers –not courts, to decide.

“While reasonable people may differ about whether the Legislature should have solved the states $3.6 billion budget shortfall in part by reducing employees’ future pension benefits, such difficult policy choices are for the Legislature,” he concluded.