A liberal group involved in a lawsuit to make Florida’s congressional districts less partisan engaged in its own partisan efforts by drawing Democratic-heavy Hispanic seats or trying to "scoop" Jewish voters into a district for U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chair, emails show.

The emails between the leaders and consultants of what’s known as the Fair Districts Coalition became a central piece of evidence Wednesday in the Republican-led Legislature’s legal defense of the congressional districts it drew in 2012.

Some coalition members sued the Legislature to have the congressional maps cancelled, saying they violate a new state constitutional amendment forbidding lawmakers from drawing districts that favor or disfavor political parties or incumbents.

To show how unfair the Legislature’s maps were, the plaintiffs submitted their own plan as an alternative.

But Republicans note that the emails involving Fair Districts leader Ellen Freidin and the consultants show that the plaintiffs’ proposals were drawn to strengthen Democrats, in general, and Wasserman Schultz in particular.

“I just got off the phone with Ellen,” consultant Brad Wieneke wrote in a Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2011, email to members of the team in discussing Wasserman Schultz’s district.

“They want to scoop as many Jews out of Tamarac and Sunrise as they can,” Wieneke said.

Freidin didn’t return emails or calls seeking comment. Wasserman Schultz said Wednesday that she knew “absolutely nothing” of the incident.

“This is the subject of a lawsuit, so there’s not much I can say,” she said.

Fair Districts lawyer, Dan Gelber, downplayed the impact of the emails.

Gelber, who participated in some of the strategy sessions, said Fair Districts and its consultants talked about Jewish voters only because it wanted to make sure that voters in the same community weren’t divided between two districts that were Democratic anyway.

Gelber acknowledged they drew proposed congressional maps with a partisan eye, but only because the map for the 27 new Florida congressional districts were so unfairly imbalanced in favor of Republicans.

“If the legislature’s argument is that our map drawers were trying to achieve fairness in a state that had been illegally manipulated to create partisan imbalance, we fully agree,” Gelber said.

“The Legislature broke the law in the way they drew districts,” he said. “The only intent that matters under the Constitution is the Legislature’s intent.”

To that end, the Fair District-drawn map in question was withdrawn from the case after Leon Circuit Judge Terry Lewis ruled against the plaintiffs’ motion to throw out the Legislature’s congressional maps.

The case is ongoing. A trial is set for August. And Lewis on Wednesday declined to give either side the right to sanction the other or the rights to attorney’s fees.

Until recently, Republicans had their secret correspondence aired in the case.

Emails indicated the staff of top legislative leaders used private email accounts, personal “dropboxes” and engaged in “brainstorming meetings” with Republican Party of Florida consultants in attempting to draw favorable political districts.