ALEXANDER v. SOUTH CAROLINA STATE CONFERENCE OF THE NAACP

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 22–807

_________________

THOMAS C. ALEXANDER, in his official capacity as PRESIDENT OF THE SOUTH CAROLINA SENATE,  et al., APPELLANTS v. THE SOUTH CAROLINA STATE CONFERENCE OF THE NAACP, et al.

on appeal from the united states district court for the district of south carolina

 Justice Kagan, with whom Justice Sotomayor and Justice Jackson join, dissenting.

 This voting case, as the Court acknowledges, turns on a quintessential factual dispute: Did South Carolina rely on racial data to reconfigure the State’s Congressional District 1? The parties here agree that the South Carolina Legislature wanted to make District 1 more Republican. They further agree that in pursuit of that aim, the legislature moved nearly 200,000 people into or out of the district. What the parties disagree about is how the people expelled from the district were chosen. The State contends that its mapmakers looked exclusively at data from the last election and targeted people who had voted Democratic. If that is true, the State’s actions (however unsavory and undemocratic) are immune from federal constitutional challenge. The Challengers, though, offer a different account. They say that the mapmakers, not content with what the election data revealed, also reviewed and heavily relied on racial data—thus exploiting the well-known correlation between race and voting behavior. And if that is true, the Challengers have a good constitutional claim, because the Equal Protection Clause forbids basing election districts mainly on race in order to achieve partisan aims. See Cooper v. Harris, 581  U. S. 285, 291, and n. 1, 308, n. 7 (2017); Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 914 (1995). So the key question again: In drawing District 1, did the mapmakers consider voting data alone, or did they also closely attend and respond to which residents were Black and which were White?

 A three-judge District Court undertook to resolve that factual dispute. And the court, over nearly a year, did everything one could ask to carry out its charge. After overseeing broad discovery, the court held a 9-day trial, featuring some two dozen witnesses and hundreds of exhibits. It evaluated evidence about South Carolina geography and politics. It heard first-hand testimony about the redistricting process. And it considered the views of statistical experts on how the State’s new district lines could—and could not—have come about. In the end, the court had to decide between two starkly different stories, backed by opposing bodies of evidence. One side you know from having read the majority opinion: The state officials repeatedly denied using race in choosing the people kicked out of District 1, insisting that they based their decisions on political data alone. The other side you have not yet heard, except in the sketchiest of terms. It is that the State’s mapmakers were experienced and skilled in the use of racial data to draw electoral maps; that they configured their mapmaking software to show how any change made to the district would affect its racial composition; that the racial make-up they landed on was precisely what they needed, to the decimal point, to achieve their partisan goals; and that their politics-only story could not account, as a statistical matter, for their large-scale exclusion of African-American citizens. Faced with that proof, all three judges agreed: The Challengers’ version of events was the more credible. The court, to put the matter bluntly, did not believe the state officials. It thought they had gerrymandered District 1 by race.

 In reviewing those conclusions, the majority goes seriously wrong. Factfinding about electoral districting, as  about other matters, is reversible “only for clear error.” Cooper, 591 U. S., at 293. This Court must give a district court’s view of events “significant deference,” which means we must uphold it so long as it is “plausible.” Ibid. Under that standard, South Carolina should now have to redraw District 1. As I’ll detail, the Challengers introduced more than enough evidence of racial gerrymandering to support the District Court’s judgment. The majority’s attempt to explain its contrary result fails at every turn. The majority picks and chooses evidence to its liking; ignores or minimizes less convenient proof; disdains the panel’s judgments about witness credibility; and makes a series of mistakes about expert opinions. The majority declares that it knows better than the District Court what happened in a South Carolina map-drawing room to produce District 1. But the proof is in the pudding: On page after page, the majority’s opinion betrays its distance from, and lack of familiarity with, the events and evidence central to this case.

 Yet there is worse: The majority cannot begin to justify its ruling on the facts without in two ways reworking the law—each to impede racial-gerrymandering cases generally. First, the majority, though ostensibly using the clear-error standard, effectively inverts it whenever a trial court rules against a redistricting State. In the majority’s version, all the deference that should go to the court’s factual findings for the plaintiffs instead goes to the losing defendant, because it is presumed to act in good faith. See ante, at 5. So the wrong side gets the benefit of the doubt: Any “possibility” that favors the State is treated as “dispositive.” Ante, at 16. Second, the majority invents a new rule of evidence to burden plaintiffs in racial-gerrymandering cases. As of today, courts must draw an adverse inference against those plaintiffs when they do not submit a so-called alternative map—no matter how much proof of a constitutional violation they otherwise present. See ante, at 30–31. Such  micro-management of a plaintiff ’s case is elsewhere unheard of in constitutional litigation. But as with its upside-down application of clear-error review, the majority is intent on changing the usual rules when it comes to addressing racial-gerrymandering claims.

 To be fair, we have seen all this once before—except that it was in a dissent. Just seven years ago, this Court decided another racial-gerrymandering case, strikingly similar to this one. In Cooper v. Harris, the Court rejected the State’s request for an alternative-map requirement; the dissent vehemently objected. See 581 U. S., at 318; id., at 334–337 (Alito, J., dissenting). The Court applied normal clear-error review, deferring to all plausible trial court findings. See id., at 293. The dissent, invoking a presumption of good faith, instead deferred to all plausible arguments of the losing State defendant. See id., at 357 (Alito, J., dissenting). Today, for all practical purposes, the Cooper dissent becomes the law.

 Perhaps most dispiriting is what lies behind the Court’s new approach—its special rules to specially disadvantage suits to remedy race-based redistricting. The Cooper dissent thought plaintiffs would use racial-gerrymandering actions as “weapons of political warfare.” Id., at 335 (Alito, J., dissenting). And it lamented that courts finding gerrymanders were “accus[ing]” States of “offensive and demeaning conduct.” Id., at 334 (internal quotation marks omitted). So the problem was more with challenging racial gerrymanders than with putting them into place. Today, that view becomes central to the majority opinion. See ante, at 6. The suspicion, and indeed derision, of suits brought to stop racial gerrymanders are self-evident; the intent to insulate States from those suits no less so. But consider what this altered perspective misses. That a State may in fact have engaged in such “offensive and demeaning” conduct. That it may have sorted citizens by their race with respect to the most fundamental of all their political rights. That  it may have done so for no reason other than to achieve partisan gain. And here, that a three-judge court unanimously found all this to have occurred.

 The proper response to this case is not to throw up novel roadblocks enabling South Carolina to continue dividing citizens along racial lines. It is to respect the plausible—no, the more than plausible—findings of the District Court that the State engaged in race-based districting. And to tell the State that it must redraw District 1, this time without targeting African-American citizens.

I

 Begin with the law, and more particularly the usual standard of review. This Court all the time recites the words: “only for clear error.” Cooper, 581 U. S., at 293, 309. And those words always mean (or anyway, always meant) the same thing. Under the clear-error standard, a lower court’s factual findings “warrant[ ] significant deference.” Id., at 293. We do not rubber stamp those findings, but we affirm them so long as they are “plausible” in light of the full record. Anderson v. Bessemer City, 470 U. S. 564, 574 (1985). And that is so even if, left to our own devices, we “would have decided the [matter] differently.” Id., at 573. We can reverse only when “left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed.” Ibid. And nowhere is that high bar higher than when witness credibility is at issue. A trial court’s judgment about whether a witness is telling the truth is entitled to “singular deference.” Cooper, 581 U. S., at 309.

 The reasons for thus deferring to trial court factfinding are equally well-settled. Trial courts are the judiciary’s factfinding specialists. They live with a case for months or years, supervising discovery, ruling on the admission of expert opinions, and watching how the evidence unfolds. They preside over the trial and see the live witnesses (24 in  this case) up close. They can observe “the variations in demeanor and tone” that “bear so heavily” on credibility judgments. Anderson, 470 U. S., at 575. They know the ins and outs of often massive records. (This case boasts, for example, a 2,122-page trial transcript, a 1,694-page compilation of key deposition testimony, and (as one judge remarked) too many exhibits to fit in the courtroom. No. 3:21–cv–3302 (D SC), ECF Doc. 503, p. 23.) Chances are, then, that a trial court will do better factfinding than an appellate court parachuting in at the last moment. The clear-error standard is a recognition of comparative competence. And it is a forced dose of humility—a virtue which sometimes doesn’t come naturally to appellate courts. Apply that last point to this Court in particular. The clear-error standard tells us that when we disagree with a trial court’s view of the facts, we are the ones likely to be wrong. So we should make triple sure that we are correcting, not creating, an error before we reverse.

 Cooper illustrates how the ordinary clear-error standard works in districting litigation. The question there, as here, was whether a state legislature chose voters for a congressional district based on their race, or instead based on their past political choices. The three-judge District Court found that race accounted for the new district lines. On review, we decided the evidence “adequately support[ed]” that conclusion. 581 U. S., at 309. As that phrasing suggests, we nowhere claimed the court was actually right. To the contrary, we observed that in this “thoroughly two-sided case,” both views of the evidence were “plausible” and “permissible,” and we declined to choose between them. Id., at 299, 307, n. 6; see id., at 316–317 (“Maybe we would have evaluated the testimony differently had we presided over the trial; or then again, maybe we would not have”). Our decision followed from the deference we thought owed to the District Court. Under clear-error review, we noted, “we will not take it upon ourselves to weigh the trial evidence as if  we were the first to hear it.” Id., at 316. Because the District Court’s view was “plausible in light of the full record,” it “must govern”—even if another were “equally or more so.” Id., at 293 (internal quotation marks omitted).

 Today’s decision could not be more different. To be sure, the majority recites the clear-error standard. See ante, at 13. But from then on, the majority ignores it—no, worse, does the opposite of what the standard commands. It is not just that the majority refuses to defer to the District Court’s findings in favor of the Challengers. It is that the majority defers to the assertions of the State defendants—the side that lost below. Invoking a “presumption of legislative good faith,” the majority insists that “when confronted with evidence that could plausibly support multiple conclusions,” a court must “draw the inference that cuts” in the State’s favor. Ante, at 5. So over and over the majority puts its thumb on the scale against the District Court. Each time it takes up a piece of evidence, the majority declares that there is a “possibility” of seeing it the State’s way. Ante, at 16, 19. And that possibility is “dispositive”; because of it, the State’s version of the facts must control. Ante, at 16; see also, e.g., ante, at 5, 17, 22 (similarly awarding points to the State because its claims were “plausible,” even if the Challengers’ were more so). In effect, the majority’s demand for deference to the State overrides clear-error review’s call for deference to the trial court. If the District Court wants deference, it had better just rule for the State.

 That approach conflicts with this Court’s precedent. Indeed, it has only ever appeared in the Cooper . . . dissent. There too, Justice Alito argued for reversing the trial court’s view of evidence because it was not “the only plausible interpretation.” 581 U. S., at 357. There too, he called for accepting the State’s contrary view because the evidence could “as easily be understood” that way. Ibid.; see id., at 345, 350, 352, 358–359. The Cooper Court noticed—and  disapproved. The dissent, it said, “repeatedly flips the appropriate standard of review,” to give the State rather than the trial court deference. Id., at 309, n. 8. But that move reflected “an elemental error”: There is no “super-charged, pro-State presumption on appeal, trumping clear error review.” Ibid. Of course clear-error review takes into account the standard of proof in the trial court. See ante, at 29–30, n. 11. But that standard is not transformed because of the good-faith presumption. In our precedents, that presumption tells a court not to assume a districting plan is flawed or to limit the State’s opportunities to defend it. See Abbott v. Perez, 585 U. S. 579, 603 (2018) (the presumption requires a plan’s challengers to bear the burden of proof ); Hunt v. Cromartie, 526 U. S. 541, 553 (1999) (the presumption may suggest sending a case to trial, rather than rejecting a plan on summary judgment). And the presumption reminds a court that it is a serious matter to find a State in breach of the Constitution. See Miller, 515 U. S., at 915. But that is all. Nothing in our decisions suggests that a trial court must resolve every plausibly disputed factual issue for the State (as if we could hardly imagine officials violating the law). And still less do our decisions suggest that the trial court’s factual findings are deprived of deference on appeal. To the contrary, as Cooper stated, clear-error review of those findings proceeds just as usual, unaffected by the presumption. See 581 U. S., at 309, n. 8; see also Miller, 515 U. S., at 915 (good faith is presumed “until a claimant makes a showing” of “race-based decisionmaking” (emphasis added)).

 The majority’s deeper reasons for specially indulging the State also clash with this Court’s decisions. In the majority’s view, claims of racial gerrymanders are often “weapons of political warfare,” using courts for illegitimate ends. Ante, at 6. And when courts vindicate those claims, they “accus[e]” States of “offensive and demeaning conduct,”  bearing “an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid,” ibid.—an apparently intolerable insult even when justified. Those sentiments, again, come straight out of the dissent in Cooper. See 581 U. S., at 334–335. The Court there took a different view, more reflective of our precedents. See id., at 319, n. 15. Time and again, this Court has noted the important role suits like this one play in stopping the unlawful race-based division of citizens into electoral districts. See, e.g., Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Bd. of Elections, 580 U. S. 178, 187 (2017). For sorting of that kind does occur—sometimes (as here) to serve partisan goals, occasionally just to suppress the political influence of minority voters. See Cooper, 581 U. S., at 319, n. 15. And when it does, the Court has held, it requires a judicial response. See, e.g., Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 649 (1993). If calling out a racial gerrymander “accus[es]” a State of a grave wrong, then so be it. This Court is not supposed to be so fearful of telling discriminators, including States, to stop discriminating. In other recent decisions, the Court has prided itself on halting race-based decision-making wherever it arises—even though serving far more commendable goals than partisan advantage. See, e.g., Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U. S. 181, 213–214 (2023). It is not the ordinary thing to agonize so much about giving “offens[e]” to a discriminating State. Ante, at 6.

 And it is not the right thing either. In adopting its novel credit-the-losing-State approach, the majority thwarts efforts to undo a pernicious kind of race-based discrimination. See Shaw, 509 U. S., at 643 (recognizing racial gerrymanders as “odious”). True enough, as the majority highlights, that the judicial system fails when a State is wrongly found to have gerrymandered a district. But the system fails as badly or worse when a State that has gerrymandered a district gets away with it. This Court has prohibited race-based gerrymanders for a reason: They divide citizens on  racial lines to engineer the results of elections (without the justification of protecting minority voters’ rights). And litigation to remedy that harm is already none too easy. Because of the complex political context, this Court has required challengers of electoral maps to show that race was not just a single but the “predominant” factor in moving voters between districts. Bethune-Hill, 580 U. S., at 187. That is, and is meant to be, a demanding burden. But once plaintiffs have met it to a three-judge district court’s satisfaction, their hardest job should be done. They should not have to face an upside-down form of clear-error review, in which this Court reverses if it decides there is a “possibility” of seeing the evidence the State’s way. Ante, at 16. The principal effect of that novel rule will be to defeat valid voting-discrimination claims.

 And the majority is not yet done putting uncommon burdens on gerrymandered plaintiffs. From now on, those plaintiffs will also be subject to an “adverse inference” unless they present a specific form of evidence—an “alternative map” that would “achieve[ the State’s] legitimate political objectives” while “producing significantly greater racial balance.” Ante, at 30–31 (internal quotation marks omitted). And that inference gives every sign of packing a wallop. The majority labels it “dispositive in many, if not most, cases,” except when the plaintiff presents (1) direct evidence of a gerrymander (say, an email admitting to the targeting of Black voters) or (2) “some extraordinarily powerful circumstantial evidence such as the strangely irregular twenty-eight-sided district lines” in Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339 (1960). Ante, at 31 (internal quotation marks omitted). Think about that last category, as the majority frames it. The majority must go back 65 years, to the most grotesque racial gerrymander in the U. S. Reports, to find a case based on circumstantial evidence that could have survived its adverse inference. How better to make the point:  The majority’s new evidentiary rule is meant to scuttle gerrymandering cases.

 Odd that the majority fails to mention a seemingly pertinent fact: Cooper expressly rejected a similar demand that a plaintiff alleging a gerrymander submit an alternative map. In that case, North Carolina argued that “[w]hen race and politics are competing explanations of a district’s lines,” the challenger must introduce “an alternative map that achieves the legislature’s political objectives while improving racial balance.” 581 U. S., at 317 (alterations omitted). The Cooper dissent agreed. See id., at 332–337. The Cooper Court did not. See id., at 317–322. The Court freely acknowledged that such a map could be good evidence of a racial gerrymander. See id., at 317. So too, it recognized “as a practical matter” that a plaintiff with an otherwise weak case would not prevail without a map. Id., at 319.1 But we could not have been more adamant in rebuffing the State’s proposed requirement. “[I]n no area of our equal protection law,” we reasoned, “have we forced plaintiffs to submit one particular form of proof.” Ibid. And we were not about to start. A “plaintiff ’s task” in a gerrymander case, we stated, “is simply to persuade the trial court—without any special evidentiary prerequisite”—that race was the predominant factor in redistricting voters. Id., at 318. Like all other submissions in a gerrymandering case— the “testimony of government officials,” proof about the data available to mapmakers, and “expert analysis”—“[a]n alternative map is merely an evidentiary tool.” Id., at 318–319. So “neither [a map’s] presence nor its absence can itself resolve a racial gerrymandering claim.” Id., at 319.

 The majority cannot evade Cooper’s force by casting today’s holding as an “adverse inference” rule rather than a simple requirement. First, there is precious little difference between the two. Given the apparent strength of the majority’s adverse inference, few litigants will feel free to proceed without commissioning alternative maps. The majority’s inference is effectively a requirement, whether or not it goes by that label. And anyway, Cooper’s reasoning easily encompasses—which is to say forbids—the majority’s new inference rule. The point in Cooper was to treat maps equivalently to—rather than “elevate” them above—other forms of evidence. Id., at 318. So if the plaintiff ’s non-map evidence supports a claim, the Court stated, the absence of a map “does not matter.” Ibid. The Cooper dissent well understood the point. No less than three times, the dissent quoted the Court’s “does not matter” line, arguing vociferously that a map’s absence should matter, if not in all cases, at least in all but “exceptional ones.” Id., at 336; see id., at 329, 359. The dissent lost that battle, but now succeeds in overturning the essence of Cooper’s map ruling.

 The majority-née-dissent’s reasons for elevating maps above other evidence have not improved since Cooper held to the contrary. The majority states that maps can serve as a good way to undermine a State’s “it was all politics” defense. See ante, at 30–31. No argument there: The Cooper Court also said as much. 581 U. S., at 317. But it went on to say that maps “are hardly the only means” of attacking such a defense—as this case well shows. Id., at 318; see infra, at 15–33. The majority also insists that plaintiffs can “easily churn out” alternative maps at “little marginal cost.” Ante, at 30 (quoting, of course, the Cooper dissent). Maybe  or maybe not; either way, the Cooper Court said, the matter is irrelevant: We have no “warrant to demand” that plaintiffs jump through “evidentiary hoops” of our creation, “whether the exercise would cost a hundred dollars or a million, a week’s more time or a year’s,” if they can otherwise prove that race predominated in drawing district lines. 581 U. S., at 319, n. 15.2 Finally, the majority suggests that all plaintiffs with serious gerrymandering cases should have known to produce an alternative map. See ante, at 5. But that assertion requires airbrushing Cooper out of our caselaw. What plaintiffs should have known after Cooper was that they could but need not submit an alternative map. The majority today punishes the Challengers for thinking that this Court would be good to its word.

 In any event, the Challengers had an understandable reason for not offering the kind of map the majority demands. The point of such a map, as the majority explains, is to help figure out whether race or politics accounts for districting lines. See ante, at 30–31. That function becomes important—so a map makes sense—only if a State in fact defends its plan as arising from political considerations. At trial, South Carolina indeed adopted that defense. But it was not clear beforehand, when the plaintiffs were developing their evidence for trial, that the State would do so. The plain fact is, politicians don’t like admitting to partisan gerrymanders: They often deny them as aggressively as they draw them. That is because “[e]xcessive partisanship in  districting” is–and is thought by voters to be—“incompatible with democratic principles.” Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U. S. 684, 718 (2019). So it is scarcely surprising that, during legislative debate, the districting plan’s sponsor responded to charges of a partisan gerrymander by asserting “that’s really not the case.” J. S. A. Supp. 286a.3 Or that during pretrial proceedings key State witnesses continued to deny partisan motives. Luke Rankin, the Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, testified in discovery that it was not “a goal of [his] to make” District 1 “more reliably republican.” Id., at 425a. Likewise, a Republican member of the House Redistricting Committee testified that he “never considered partisan gain as a goal” of redistricting, and “never” heard “anyone else” admit that goal either. Id., at 409a–410a. And the Senate Redistricting Subcommittee’s counsel swore that there was “no effort” to make District 1 “more Republican leaning.” Id., at 392a. So the Challengers, prior to trial, were not on notice of a partisanship defense. The State, to be sure, changed tack in the end: A strong case made by plaintiffs can powerfully concentrate a defendant’s mind. But by that time, the Challengers’ mapmaker (Dr. Kosuke Imai) had completed his work, and the trial had begun.

 Even before looking at the trial evidence, the majority thus places the Challengers in a deep hole. Although this Court recently disclaimed any need for an alternative map, the majority today draws an adverse inference from such a map’s absence. And contrary to settled practice, the majority decrees that, even on clear-error review of a ruling for  the Challengers, the State will emerge victorious if its version of events is so much as possible. Combine those two facets of the majority’s approach, and the trial evidence fades into insignificance. A legal twist here and a legal bend there ensure that the majority need show no respect for the three-judge District Court’s well-considered factual findings.

II

 Normal clear-error review would lead to a different outcome. The District Court faced a factual question: Did the State rely significantly on racial data in drawing its new District 1? Based on the mountains of evidence presented, the court decided that the State had done so. That finding was reasonable, and deserves to be affirmed.

 As the majority explains, this case concerns changes that South Carolina made in its most recent redistricting to Congressional District 1. See ante, at 7–12. Under the pre-existing map, District 1 was a thin strip of land stretching along the Atlantic Coast. See Appendix, infra, at 35, Figure 1 (2011 Congressional Map). It was bordered to the northwest by District 6, the State’s only majority-Black district. See ibid.; J. S. A. 429a. After the 2020 census, South Carolina had to redraw both those districts to comply with the Constitution’s one-person, one-vote requirement. District 1 was overpopulated by about 88,000 people, and District 6 was underpopulated by about 85,000. The State chose, though, not to make a one-way transfer of residents from the overpopulated to the underpopulated district. To unite two counties, the State first moved around 53,000 residents from (the underpopulated) District 6 into (the overpopulated) District 1. That shift, of course, exacerbated the problem: The State now needed to transfer some 140,000 residents in the opposite direction. It did so mainly by moving a large chunk of Charleston County from District 1 to District 6.

  And here is the rub—the thing that created this case. The part of the county that the legislature moved out of District 1 was disproportionately Black, and by a lot. The mapmakers targeted several heavily Black neighborhoods in North Charleston, while leaving many heavily White neighborhoods alone. See id., at 261a–262a. And no matter how you slice the numbers, the effects were stark. More than 60% of Black Charleston County residents previously in District 1 were relocated to District 6. 649 F. Supp. 3d 177, 189 (SC 2023). Of the 11 precincts with the largest Black populations, 10 were gone. Ibid. Overall, the proportion of African Americans in the excised part of the county (23.8%) was more than twice as high as in the remaining part (10.3%). See id., at 190; Supp. App. 153a. The upshot was that 79% of Charleston County’s Black population now found itself in District 6, whereas only 53% had been there before. See 649 F. Supp. 3d, at 190, and n. 9. As the State’s main mapmaker—and star witness—acknowledged, the new lines created a “tremendous [racial] disparity” in comparison to the old districting plan. J. S. A. 262a; 649 F. Supp. 3d, at 189.

 The question at trial was how that disparity had come about. By that time, the State had adopted its politics-only defense. It argued, as the majority says, that the point of redrawing District 1 was to “enhance[ ] the Republican advantage” there—i.e., to make sure a Democratic candidate could not win. Ante, at 9. But that claim, even if true, would not be enough for the State to prevail. As this Court has held, a State cannot divide voters by race to achieve political ends. See Miller, 515 U. S., at 914. “[T]he sorting of voters on the grounds of their race” is a constitutional problem “even if race is meant to function as a proxy” for political affiliation. Cooper, 581 U. S., at 309, n. 7; see id., at 291, and n. 1. So the critical issue was not whether the State’s ultimate aim was political or racial (though the majority often phrases it that way, see, e.g., ante, at 1, 5, 17). Instead,  the issue was whether the State had advanced its partisan objective primarily by racial means. The Challengers maintained that it had. They said the State’s mapmakers had consciously removed Black citizens from District 1 on the (justified) assumption that doing so would turn the district redder. The State, by contrast, denied in any way using race to draw District 1’s lines. According to its account, the disproportionate removal of African Americans from District 1 was just an accidental byproduct of political sorting—more specifically, of ejecting precincts that had strongly supported then-candidate Biden in the 2020 election.4 Faced with those competing stories, the District Court had to decide which to credit.

 The court’s decision to credit the Challengers, as I’ll next show, was not clear error—indeed, far from it. There was of course evidence pointing in each direction; like Cooper, this was a “two-sided case.” 581 U. S., at 307, n. 6. But the Challengers made a weighty showing that the mapmakers relied substantially on racial data in moving voters around. The mapmakers had the incentive to do so, given the limits of the political information in their possession. They had the ability to do so—both access to data and experience using it. And direct testimony showed that the mapmakers had in fact continually examined racial data during the line-drawing process. The map yielded by that process hit on the dot the Black voting percentage that state officials  knew they needed to achieve their partisan goal. And when statistics experts reviewed the map, they found that the State’s politics-only story could not explain the redistricting’s extreme racial disparity. In dismissing that strong case, the majority cherry-picks evidence, ignores credibility findings, misunderstands expert views, and substitutes its own statistical theories. Its opinion gives not a whit of respect to the District Court’s factual findings, thus defying the demands of clear-error review.

A

 Start with the State’s chief mapmaker. William Roberts, as the majority notes, was a “nonpartisan staffer with 20 years of experience” drawing maps for Republicans and Democrats alike. Ante, at 8–9. He was good at what he did—expert, “helpful,” and “precise.” J. S. A. 74a, 254a. And also this—he was a veteran consumer of racial data. On cross-examination, Roberts testified as follows:

Q: I think I heard the number of 75 to a hundred localities you’ve worked in over the past 20 years?

A: Yes. . . .

Q: Before this redistricting cycle, you always looked at race data in the 75 to a hundred districts you worked in, correct?

A: Yes. . . .

Q: Indeed, . . . you provided guidance to localities that they should be looking at BVAP [Black Voting-Age Population] in drawing lines, correct?

A: That’s correct.

Id., at 204a–205a. The point of looking at BVAP, according to the mapmaker’s testimony, was not to suppress the Black vote. Rather, Roberts stated that he did so to achieve a panoply of lawful districting goals—like assessing Voting Rights Act compliance and “help[ing] the general public understand the race of voters getting moved in and out.” Id.,  at 206a; see id., at 205a. Whatever the particular purpose, he consulted racial data constantly. Now as you know from the majority, Roberts denied doing so in the redistricting at issue here. See ante, at 14–15. But when asked “so in your 20 years of redistricting, this was the only time [that] you didn’t look at race?,” Roberts answered “That’s correct.” J. S. A. 207a.

 True to his persistent practice (if not to his this-case-only denial), Roberts configured maproom computers to show how every line-drawing decision would affect the new District 1’s racial make-up. In other words, as a mapmaker moved a district line this way or that, he could immediately see the resulting change in the district’s BVAP. Displaying racial data in that way was not an unavoidable feature of the mapmaking software. As one staffer explained: “[Y]ou could configure” the computer setup “in a multitude of ways.” ECF Doc. 462–9, at 114. You could make it so that new BVAP numbers appeared on your screen “while you manipulated geography”—but “there [was] no requirement that you ha[d] to set it up that way.” Ibid. The mapmakers had to choose to display racial data. And here is the key thing: They did. A Senate staffer who often sat with Roberts in the maproom explained that not only “political data” but also “demographic data”—specifically, “race” and “voting age population by race”—was “visible” on computer screens “[a] lot of the time.” ECF Doc. 462–4, at 40. And on cross-examination, Roberts admitted that to be true:

Q: So BVAP was visible on the screen while you were drawing maps?

A: Yeah. It was in the statistics window at the bottom of the screen.

Q: So, you could see BVAP as you were making changes in real time as you were drawing lines?

A: We could see the statistics update after a change was made.

 Q: So, if you moved a district line, you could see if the BVAP went up or down, right?

A: You could see on the statistics what the overall district BVAP would be.

J. S. A. 207a; see J. S. A. Supp. 402a (another staffer acknowledging: “Was I aware of, while I was drawing, what the racial makeup of what I was drawing was? Yes”).

 So Roberts’s testimony presented a puzzle. As the majority highlights, Roberts consistently denied relying on racial data. See, e.g., ante, at 14–15, 17. But racial data, according to both him and others, was easily accessible—in fact, was usually visible—on his computer while the line-drawing was going on. And he never explained why it was there. Why configure a computer to tell you, at every stage of the mapmaking process, how the slightest change in a district line would affect Black voting-age population if you weren’t tracking and manipulating Black voting-age population? Roberts had no answer.

 But there was an obvious reason for attending so closely to racial data, as even the majority acknowledges: One surefire way of making a South Carolina district more Republican is to make it less Black. See ante, at 15–16. The difference between a “Republican tilt” and a “Democratic tilt” in District 1, notes the majority, is the difference between a 17% BVAP and a 21% BVAP. Ibid. That is because in recent statewide elections, more than 90% of Black South Carolina voters—and usually more than 95%—have supported the Democratic candidate. See J. S. A. Supp. 82a. In South Carolina, to remove a Black voter from a congressional district is pretty nearly to remove a future Democratic vote. That is no secret. So it is small wonder that racial data was conspicuously displayed on Roberts’s computer. And then small wonder that the District Court found Roberts to have used that data to draw district lines. See 649 F. Supp. 3d, at 191. More doubt would properly have  attached to the opposite finding—that Roberts put this hugely relevant data on his screen only to ignore it as he worked to make District 1 more Republican. That would have taken the self-restraint of a monk.

 Especially so because using only the political data at hand would not have done the job as well. “Why,” the majority asks, “would Roberts have used racial data” when he had access to sub-precinct-level voting data from the 2020 election? Ante, at 18; see ante, at 33–34. The question is apparently meant to be rhetorical; but the trial record provides a ready answer—and one more than sufficient on clear-error review. One of the Challengers’ experts testified that “[t]he 2020 election data” was “not a good” measure of partisan tilt—neither so “accurate” nor so “reliable.” App. 135. And racial data, another expert suggested, served the mapmakers’ goal better. See id., at 112. The single-sentence explanation is this: In South Carolina, a Black voter is more likely to vote for a Democrat in the next election than is someone who voted for a Democrat in the last election. That is because White voting preferences in the State are not as “stable” as Black voting preferences. Ibid. A White voter “might vote for a Democrat in one election” only to vote “for a Republican in another.” Ibid. So to remove a past Democratic voter (as contrasted with a Black voter) is not necessarily to remove a future Democratic vote.5 And the gap only widens for past presidential voters, like those who participated in the 2020 election. In presidential elections, one expert explained, more people than usual switch party lines to “vote for the candidate”—a trend that then-President Trump’s candidacy may have further amplified. Id., at 135; see J. S. A. 382a. Given all that, the South Carolina mapmakers’ racial data was peculiarly predictive: The  single best thing Roberts and his staff could do to increase the future Republican vote in District 1 was to exclude a Black voter. That fact would not have meant they looked at racial data alone; they also had the 2020 election data on their computers. But the racial data offered a potent tool for ensuring that District 1 would vote for a Republican in coming elections.6

 And strong evidence showed, as the District Court found, that the mapmakers wielded this tool—that they used their racial data to meet the BVAP level needed to achieve their partisan goal. Recall the large turnover of voters in District 1. See supra, at 15. Some 53,000 people were moved into, and 140,000 people were moved out of, the district (which wound up with 730,000 total). Yet the district’s racial balance did not budge. The district began with a 16.6% BVAP. See J. S. A. 430a. That number went up with the 53,000-person addition, because almost 40% of the new residents were Black. See id., at 439a. So what did the mapmakers do? As noted earlier, they removed from District 1 over 60% of Black Charleston County residents, by excising a part of the county more than twice as Black (23.8%) as the part they kept in (10.3%). See 649 F. Supp. 3d, at 189–190; Supp. App. 153a; supra, at 16. That brought the district’s BVAP right back down to 16.7%—again below the 17% required to create the desired Republican tilt. See J. S. A. 452a; 649 F. Supp. 3d, at 188. In the majority’s description,  what happened was of no particular note—just that the District’s BVAP “stayed more or less constant.” Ante, at 15. But consider: With approximately a quarter of District 1’s population moving in or out, the district’s BVAP shifted by . . . one-tenth of one percentage point. The District Court observed that uncanny stability, knowing that racial data was at the mapmakers’ fingertips. See 649 F. Supp. 3d, at 191. And the court, as addressed shortly, had heard statistical experts deny that the racially disparate districting could have come about through political sorting. See infra, at 26–33. So it was no large step—and hardly clear error—for the court to conclude that the mapmakers had gerrymandered Charleston County to achieve “a target of 17%” BVAP. 649 F. Supp. 3d, at 193.

 As against all that, what does the majority offer? Only a series of self-serving denials. The sum and substance of the State’s case came from the testimony of Roberts and State Senator George Campsen, who was the redistricting plan’s sponsor. Yes, the new map, Roberts conceded, had a “tremendous” racial skew. J. S. A. 262a. But Roberts and Campsen maintained that they had never sorted by race—never used their (constantly accessible) racial data to draw district lines. Both insisted that they had looked only to voting results from the 2020 election to ensure their partisan goal. The majority buys it—hook, line, and sinker. Indeed, the majority relies on nothing else. It treats Roberts’s and Campsen’s account as a “fact of the matter,” rather than a vigorously contested assertion. Cooper, 581 U. S., at 307, n. 6; see, e.g., ante, at 8–10. The majority trusts the two State witnesses, and believes what they said.

 The problem is that the three judges who sat on the District Court did not. And they are the ones entitled to make credibility judgments. See supra, at 5; Cooper, 581 U. S., at 309 (“[W]e give singular deference to a trial court’s judgments about the credibility of witnesses”). That is for an obvious reason: They were there. They could assess every  aspect of a witness’s testimony, including demeanor, tone of voice, and facial expression. They could see when the witness was at ease and when he stumbled. And after taking account of all those cues, the three judges all reached the same conclusion about Roberts and Campsen. They thought that those two witnesses were not telling the truth.

 The panel was especially disbelieving of Roberts, if almost in spite of itself. The court (contra the majority) well understood what the presumption of good faith required. The judges were predisposed, as the majority has to acknowledge, to think that this “good man,” who had for so long been a fixture on the South Carolina political scene, would play it straight. Ante, at 8–9, and n. 5 (citing J. S. A. 23a, 74a–75a, 254a, 263a, 421a). But in the end, the court felt compelled to find that Roberts’s old habit of relying on race died hard. To the panel, the mapmaker’s tale did not hang together. He said he did not consider race in drawing lines; but he could recite “off the top of his head” the racial breakdown of particular precincts in District 1. 649 F. Supp. 3d, at 191. Those “highly accurate” estimates, the court noted, reflected Roberts’s obvious knowledge of “the racial demographics of the state down to the individual precinct level.” Ibid., n. 12. And Roberts never did—never could—explain why he put so much racial data on his computer screen if not to look at it as he drew district lines. Especially given the surrounding evidence, the court found, Roberts’s “claim that he did not consider race” in excluding voters from District 1 “rings hollow.” Id., at 191 (internal quotation marks omitted). On normal clear-error review, that credibility judgment would control.

 And so too for Campsen, who obfuscated at every turn. At trial, Campsen reversed his own deposition testimony about whether state senators knew the racial makeup of their districts. (First they knew, then he couldn’t possibly speak for them.) See J. S. A. 377a–378a. He answered as simple a question as whether “race and party are correlated  in South Carolina” this way:

“Yes—well, yes and no. I guess that’s fluid. It is fluid, but yes. . . . Well, it’s not in every instance, but generally African Americans tend to vote higher, you know, more—you can look at the polls—when you look at the numbers after the fact—I didn’t look at them drawing the map—but you see that in the numbers.” Id., at 381a.

And he contradicted common knowledge—as well as the State’s own defense—when he point-blank denied that sorting people based on their voting behavior could result in racial disparities. See id., at 383a (“Q: You would agree with me that if you . . . focus on partisan numbers, there’s a risk that you might disproportionately impact Black voters in drawing lines, right? A: No, I’m not going to agree with that”). Would you buy what this man was selling? As the contradictions, non-answers, and evasions mounted, the District Court quite reasonably decided that it could not.

 Put all this together, and the Challengers offered—even before getting to their statistical studies—a more than plausible case of racial gerrymandering. They showed that the exclusion of voters from District 1 was racially disproportionate—not by a little but by a lot. They showed that the State’s star mapmaker had always—always—before considered race in drawing district lines. They showed why he would want to do so here, to create a reliable Republican tilt. They showed that the mapmaker configured his computer to exhibit in real time how every adjustment of a district line affected the district’s racial make-up. And they showed that after moving nearly 200,000 residents this way and that, the mapmaker managed to land on the exact BVAP figure he knew would ensure his political goal. Now it is true that the State, when confronted with this evidence, did not confess error, as the majority comes close to demanding. Its officials, as you might expect, adamantly  disputed the charge of racial discrimination. But they could not keep their story straight or make it believable to three judges. The more the officials talked, the more the court became convinced that, to create a red District 1, they had divided citizens by race. And that, again, was even before the statisticians took center stage.

B

 Once the statisticians did so, the Challengers’ case was clinched—at the least, from a clear-error perspective. Consider how much the controverted issue lent itself to statistical evidence. That issue began with a simple fact: The part of Charleston County that the mapmakers excised from District 1 was (vastly) disproportionately Black. The dispute was about what caused that disparity. Statistical evidence showing that it could have arisen from political sorting would significantly benefit the State’s defense. Conversely, statistical evidence showing that the racial disparity could not have arisen in that way would significantly benefit the Challengers’ case. So you might think that the trial would feature a war of statistical experts, each presenting their own multivariate regressions. But you would be wrong. The Challengers did their part, but the State failed to respond in kind. Rather than submit its own statistical studies, the State devoted all its efforts to trying to pick apart the Challengers’. It thus anticipated today’s majority, which (given the unbalanced record) can do nothing more than search for holes, however minute, in the Challengers’ expert evidence. But two separate studies emerge unscathed, and with significant probative force—fully sufficient on clear-error review to justify the District Court’s conclusion. Each analysis was designed to answer the critical question: whether Charleston County was split as it was based on its residents’ race. And each found that it was. Even controlling for political preference, Black voters  were more likely than White voters to be removed from District 1.7

 Dr. Jordan Ragusa’s regression found that race, separate and apart from partisanship, was “an important factor in the design of the 1st district.” J. S. A. 509a; see 649 F. Supp. 3d, at 192. Ragusa looked at the size, racial demographics, and partisan composition of each precinct in the old District 1. (His measure of partisanship was the vote count for then-candidate Biden in the 2020 election, which mirrored the political data the State’s mapmakers possessed.) By controlling for all three of those variables, Ragusa explained, he could “statistically disentangle the effect of each factor.” J. S. A. 505a. And when he did so, Ragusa determined that “the decision to move a [precinct] out of [District 1] was highly correlated to the number of African American voters” in the precinct. 649 F. Supp. 3d, at 192; see J. S. A. 508a–509a, 514a. If, for example, a precinct had 100 to 500 Black voters, “the chance of [its] being moved out” of District 1 was “no greater than 20%.” 649 F. Supp. 3d, at 192. But as the number climbed, so did the likelihood: When a district had 1,500 Black voters, the probability of exclusion reached 60%. See ibid. And on top of that analysis, Ragusa directly compared the effects of partisanship and race on the exclusion decision. He found that the mapmakers removed 41% of precincts with more than 1,000 Biden voters, but 62% of precincts with more than 1,000 Black voters. See J. S. A. Supp. 14a. That comparison showed that “the racial composition of a precinct was a  stronger predictor of whether it was removed” from District 1 “than its partisan composition.” Ibid.; see 649 F. Supp. 3d, at 192.

  A second expert, Dr. Baodong Liu, reinforced Ragusa’s conclusions about the significance of race, using a complementary methodology and data set. Liu evaluated the different likelihoods that White Democrats and Black Democrats would wind up outside or inside District 1. Based on demographic data and vote tabulations from the 2018 Democratic primary, Liu first found that Black Democrats were moved out of District 1 disproportionately to White Democrats. Whereas 26% of Black Democrats in the district were excluded, only 19% of White Democrats were; so the rate at which Black Democrats were excluded was more than one-third higher. See J. S. A. Supp. 94a. And then Liu sliced his data another way, which confirmed his results. Replicating a methodology that this Court approved in Cooper, see 581 U. S., at 315, Liu looked at Democratic voters in all the counties that at least partly overlapped with District 1. Which of those voters, Liu asked, actually wound up in District 1 and which did not? Once again, the answer showed a significant racial disproportion. Whereas 69% of White Democrats in the region were placed in the new District 1, only 51% of Black Democrats were put there. J. S. A. Supp. 100a.

 The majority’s primary objection to Ragusa’s and Liu’s studies—that they did not “control for contiguity or compactness,” ante, at 23, 27—is woefully misplaced. The gripe is that the experts assumed “unrealistic[ally]” that any precinct, no matter where located, could be moved. Ante, at 23. If the experts had thought about geography, the majority suggests, they might have found that Black Democrats were disproportionately relocated because they lived in precincts closer to a district boundary. The argument is reprised from Cooper—but (what a surprise) only from the dissent. See 581 U. S., at 358. And the reason the objection  got nowhere in Cooper applies once again. The relevant district in Cooper was super-thin, so that the lion’s share of precincts within it were close enough to a boundary line to be easily moved. See id., at 326. And so too here. Recall that the only issue under review is whether the State improperly moved Black voters from District 1 to District 6—because that is the only gerrymander the District Court found. Now turn to the map of South Carolina’s old districts in this opinion’s Appendix. District 1 was a narrow strip on the Atlantic coast; District 6 ran along its whole length. Nearly everyone within District 1 lived close to the border line; so nearly everyone could have been sent to District 6, consistent with contiguity and compactness. That is true even of people who lived on the beach. Under the State’s districting guidelines, “[c]ontiguity by water is sufficient,” so the mapmakers could—and in fact did—split the new District 1’s land area by pulling District 6 all the way to the water. J. S. A. 541a; see Appendix, infra, at 35, Figure 2 (Inset to 2022 Congressional Map). The upshot is that precinct location did not meaningfully constrain the State’s choice of which voters to move from District 1 to District 6. And so the Challengers’ experts were not required to pretend that it did.8

 That is why the majority, to support its contiguity theory, must use a “simple example” of zero relevance to this case. Ante, at 23. Says the majority: District 6 “precincts near [Colleton C]ounty’s northern border with Bamberg County could not have been moved into District 1 without egregiously flouting the State’s important interests in contiguity or compactness.” Ante, at 24. That is true: As the map shows, District 6 is fat, and the precincts the majority mentions are far away from the District 1-District 6 line. See Appendix, infra, at 35, Figure 1. But of course this case has nothing to do with those outermost District 6 precincts, or even with the closer-in District 6 precincts that could have been moved into District 1. The sole issue here, again, is whether the State disproportionately selected heavily African-American precincts to move out of District 1. When it gets around to that issue, the majority says: “[T]he same problem” as in its example “arises with respect to the question whether a precinct in District 1 . . . could have been moved into District 6.” Ante, at 24. But that is not true, for self-evident reasons. As just described—and shown on the map—the old District 1 was thin, and the great bulk of its precincts were close to the District 1-District 6 line. See Appendix, infra, at 35, Figure 1. So they could have been moved “without egregiously flouting”—actually, without flouting at all—“the State’s important interests in contiguity or compactness.” Ante, at 24. The majority’s inapt comparison is revelatory in one sense only: It shows why appellate courts are supposed to use a clear-error standard—to make sure we are fixing, not introducing, mistakes.

 The majority’s other main criticism, aimed solely at Ragusa, is original to this Court: It was never raised or considered below (or, as far as I know, in other voting suits). The objection relates to the way Ragusa measured each precinct’s partisan tilt. He asked how many 2020 Biden voters lived in a precinct relative to its voting-age population. So, for example, a 1,250-person precinct with 700 Biden voters would count as much more Democratic than the same-sized precinct with 350 Biden voters. The majority says that  measure may be “statistically permissible”—but still is not good enough. Ante, at 26. In the majority’s view, Ragusa should have “account[ed] for” potential variance in precinct turnout by looking to the Biden net vote instead of the Biden total vote. Ante, at 25–26. Now I’ll admit: I’m not a statistician. I can see what the majority is saying, but my inclination would be to seek out other opinions—including from Ragusa himself—about the net-vote approach, and whether it would matter. The problem is I can’t do that here. The theory is the majority’s brainchild, absent from the District Court’s proceedings. The State never asked Ragusa about it, before or during trial. The State’s own expert did not bring it up. The State did not raise it in briefing below. And most important: Nothing in the trial record suggests that adopting the net-vote measure would have made a real difference. The majority, to show you why it might, offers what it calls a “simplified” example. Ante, at 25. For simplified read “fictional”—meaning, not reflective of any actual precinct’s vote. And for simplified, also read “unrepresentative”? To take just one example: Maybe there are some, but I doubt there are many, precincts in which 1,100 of 1,250 voting-age people make it to the polls. See ante, at 26. A number of things about precinct composition and turnout would need to be true for the net-vote/total-vote distinction to make a significant difference to Ragusa’s analysis—and we know none of them. Sure, it’s fun to play armchair statistician. But it’s irresponsible to reverse a trial court’s decision—on clear-error review—based on such hypothesizing.

 A couple of final attacks fare no better. The majority faults Liu for testing partisan tilt in District 1 with data from the 2018 gubernatorial primaries, rather than the 2020 presidential election. The majority confidently declares that because an off-year primary has a lower turnout, the “[d]ata from [it] is less informative.” Ante, at 28. Liu’s explanation is deemed unworthy of mention. It was that  the higher turnout of a presidential election, along with its greater focus on individual candidates, makes it a poorer measure of a district’s year-in, year-out partisan tilt. See App. 135. The State’s own expert did not contest that view, so the majority’s skepticism again finds no support in the trial record. And even if 2020 data is better than 2018 data—it might be—what is better than either is both. That is what the Challengers had: Ragusa’s study based on 2020 data and Liu’s based on 2018 data, each showing a racial gerrymander.

 Much the same thing is true as to a more obscure methodological issue the majority raises (again, needless to say, sua sponte): whether statistical analysis should “operate[ ] at the voter level” or the precinct level. Ante, at 27, n. 9. Here, the majority cannot get its attack-line consistent. First the majority claims that Ragusa’s testimony was worse than the expert’s in Cooper because Ragusa’s relied on “precinct-level analysis” rather than looking at individual voters. Ibid. But within a page the majority asserts that Liu’s study was “highly unrealistic” because he “treated each voter as an independent unit” rather than considering “neighbors” together. Ante, at 27–28. So an expert challenging a gerrymander can’t win either way. But put that aside; the key thing, once more, is that the Challengers had not one but two types of analysis working in their favor. However a statistician looked at the data—whether voter-level or precinct-level—he reached the same conclusion: that the State’s mapmakers targeted Black voters.

 And the State offered little by way of rebuttal. It, too, had an expert witness. And that witness, Sean Trende, took a couple of shots at Ragusa’s methods. See ECF Doc. 510, at 46–52. But he did not offer the most relevant kind of evidence—a counter-analysis showing that partisanship subsumed race in the design of District 1. Trende had access  to all the same data Ragusa did. He even had access to Ragusa’s computer code, so that he would not have needed to start from scratch. See id., at 58. He could just have rerun the code after fixing whatever variables he thought wrong. What should one make of Trende’s failure to do so? If I were adopting the majority’s methods, I would draw an “adverse inference” from the decision not to submit such “easily churn[ed] out” evidence. Ante, at 30. Surely it must count as an “implicit concession” by the State that the statistical analysis, even with the desired fixes, would keep showing evidence of a racial gerrymander? Ante, at 31. But I don’t need to create a novel adverse inference to make the critical point. It was hardly clear error for the District Court to credit the Challengers’ statistical evidence about race’s predominant role when the State presented no similar evidence to support its partisanship theory. The majority’s contrary view—that the State’s nothing necessarily beat the Challengers’ something—is one more tell that it has left the proper review standard way behind.

III

 In every way, the majority today stacks the deck against the Challengers. They must lose, the majority says, because the State had a “possible” story to tell about not considering race—even if the opposite story was the more credible. Ante, at 16. And they must lose again, the majority says, because they failed to offer a particular form of proof—which they did not know would be relevant and which this Court recently told plaintiffs was not required. It does not matter that the Challengers offered extensive evidence, including expert statistical analyses, that the State’s districting plan was the product of racial sorting. It does not matter that the State, by way of response, offered little more than strained and awkward denials. It does not matter that three judges—entitled to respect for their factual findings—thought that those denials were not believable, and did not  put a dent in the plaintiffs’ proof. When racial classifications in voting are at issue, the majority says, every doubt must be resolved in favor of the State, lest (heaven forfend) it be “accus[ed]” of “offensive and demeaning” conduct. Ante, at 6.

 What a message to send to state legislators and mapmakers about racial gerrymandering. For reasons I’ve addressed, those actors will often have an incentive to use race as a proxy to achieve partisan ends. See supra, at 20–22. And occasionally they might want to straight-up suppress the electoral influence of minority voters. See Cooper, 581 U. S., at 319, n. 15. Go right ahead, this Court says to States today. Go ahead, though you have no recognized justification for using race, such as to comply with statutes ensuring equal voting rights. Go ahead, though you are (at best) using race as a short-cut to bring about partisan gains—to elect more Republicans in one case, more Democrats in another. It will be easy enough to cover your tracks in the end: Just raise a “possibility” of non-race-based decision-making, and it will be “dispositive.” Ante, at 16. And so this “odious” practice of sorting citizens, built on racial generalizations and exploiting racial divisions, will continue. Shaw, 509 U. S., at 643. In the electoral sphere especially, where “ugly patterns of pervasive racial discrimination” have so long governed, we should demand better—of ourselves, of our political representatives, and most of all of this Court. Id., at 639. Respectfully, I dissent.