Gov. Nathan Deal has signed off on state House and Senate redistricting maps. And the congressional maps will likely head his way this week. But debate continues on the maps, and it hinges on interpretations of the federal Voting Rights Act.

The Voting Rights Act protects minority voters at the polls. The law requires Georgia to follow special provisions to bolster minority electoral strength.

The state can’t eliminate districts where minorities comprise more than 50 percent of the voting-age population. That’s called retrogression. Atlanta Republican Representative Ed Lindsey says the newly-drawn boundaries meet the law’s requirements.

“Georgia will have a greater number of majority-minority districts then we’ve had in the history of our state,” he said during floor debate on the congressional maps. “There is no retrogression here. Let’s move on.”

But Democrats say that’s not the only relevant measure. Sen. Jason Carter, an Atlanta Democrat, says it would be the first time Georgia relied solely on this aspect to comply with the law.

“It is a new interpretation of the Voting Rights Act that would state that the only thing that matters under section 5 is whether the district is 50 percent plus one,” Carter said in an interview at the Capitol.

Carter says under the Act’s 2006 reauthorization, Congress defined the standard for states like Georgia with a history of violating minority voters’ rights.

“The new amendment says you focus exclusively, not on all of these different circumstances, but exclusively on the ability to elect the candidate of choice,” he said.

Under that standard, he says, legislators need to consider so-called cross-over districts where minorities are not in the majority but can form multi-racial coalitions with other voters.

Carter says under the new maps, Republicans have diluted minority voting strength in many such districts.

But Athens Republican, Senator Bill Cowsert, points to a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court case. He says the justices ruled states don’t have to consider cross-over districts.

“It’s a difficult principle to apply and the court recognizes that we are not wading into that,” Cowsert said in an interview at his office at the state Capitol. “It’s very clear there is no protection against retrogression other than in majority-minority districts.”

This is the crux of the legal dispute, Sen. Carter says.

He says the Court’s decision doesn’t apply to Georgia and other states that must provide additional protections for minority voters. But he says Republicans are betting the Court will extend the decision.

“They decided to say, ‘We’re going to take a view of the Voting Rights Act that is new and that has not been sanctioned by a court, and use that’,” he said.

Republicans say Democrats are only concerned about protecting cross-over districts because they win votes there. And they say some of these districts have lost population, causing boundaries to shift.

The maps are most likely headed to the courts. After Gov. Deal signs off on them, they’ll go to U.S. Department of Justice officials for their review.