Attorney General Andrea Campbell is asking the state’s highest court to throw out a lawsuit filed by State Auditor Diana DiZoglio as the two Democrats clash over whether the Legislature must open its books to an outside audit.

In a court filing last week, Campbell urged the Supreme Judicial Court to dismiss DiZoglio’s case. The auditor recently filed a lawsuit, seeking to force the Massachusetts House and Senate to turn over records tied to an audit of their internal operations.

Voters approved a ballot question last year, giving the auditor authority to audit the Legislature. The measure passed with 72% support. Since then, legislative leaders have resisted providing documents. Campbell has declined to authorize legal action against the House and Senate on the auditor’s behalf.

Campbell argues DiZoglio broke established legal procedure by going directly to the SJC without approval from the attorney general’s office.

She wrote that her office is the “gatekeeper empowered to determine when, if ever, the Commonwealth’s intragovernmental legal disputes require judicial resolution.”

“There would be no gate at all were mere disagreement with the Attorney General sufficient basis for a dissenting state official to initiate a lawsuit. Were such suits permissible, the Commonwealth, which has heretofore spoken with one voice in litigation, would be rendered a babel of voices with competing interests, many on the docket of this Court,” Campbell wrote.

Campbell said her office has a “longstanding policy” of rarely approving lawsuits between branches of state government. She warned that allowing such disputes to proceed freely could flood the courts with political fights.

Otherwise, she wrote, “weighty issues concerning the structure of government” would arrive in court without full legal development. Filing suit too quickly “could become more political exercise than serious legal endeavor, wasting judicial and taxpayer resources," she wrote.

DiZoglio, a former state legislator, says she repeatedly asked Campbell either to sue the Legislature or to appoint a special assistant attorney general so her office could proceed independently. Campbell declined.

In her lawsuit, DiZoglio argues the attorney general “acted arbitrarily and capriciously, or scandalously” by refusing to allow the case to move forward.

She also wrote that Campbell’s “repeated questions and irrelevant hypotheticals effectively obstructed” the auditor’s effort to obtain documents through litigation.

The auditor is asking the SJC to order House Speaker Ron Mariano (D-Quincy), Senate President Karen Spilka (D-Ashland), and the clerks of both chambers to turn over budgets, past audits, financial transactions, and settlement agreements. She also wants the court to appoint a special assistant attorney general to represent her office.

Andrew Carden, DiZoglio’s director of operations, said the auditor’s office first learned about Campbell’s request to dismiss the case when WBUR, a Boston-based NPR affiliate, contacted them for comment.

Carden said the office is “not at all surprised” by Campbell’s move.

“We hope the SJC stands with the 72% of people who passed this issue into law by allowing Attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan to represent our office in court, since the AG is working against our efforts to audit the Legislature,” Carden told WBUR.