Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017)
9
Opinion of the Court
those unresolved “factual disputes,” the District Court
denied North Carolina’s motion for summary judgment. 4
Record 238 (July 29, 2014 Order). And nothing in the
subsequent trial supported the State’s assertion about
Harris’s and Bowser’s organizational ties: Indeed, the
State chose not to present any further evidence relating to
the membership issue. Based on the resulting record, the
District Court summarily rejected the State’s claim that
Harris and Bowser were something other than independent plaintiffs. See 159 F. Supp. 3d, at 609.
That conclusion defeats North Carolina’s attempt to
argue for claim or issue preclusion here. We have no basis
for assessing the factual assertions underlying the State’s
argument any differently than the District Court did.
Nothing in the State’s evidence clearly rebuts Harris’s and
Bowser’s testimony that they never joined any of the
Dickson groups. We need not decide whether the alleged
memberships would have supported preclusion if they had
been proved. It is enough that the District Court reasonably thought they had not.
The State’s back-up argument about our standard of
review also falls short. The rule that we review a trial
court’s factual findings for clear error contains no exception for findings that diverge from those made in another
court. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 52(a)(6) (“Findings of fact
. . . must not be set aside unless clearly erroneous”); see
also Hernandez v. New York, 500 U. S. 352, 369 (1991)
(plurality opinion) (applying the same standard to a state
court’s findings). Whatever findings are under review
receive the benefit of deference, without regard to whether
a court in a separate suit has seen the matter differently.
So here, we must ask not which court considering Districts
1 and 12 had the better view of the facts, but simply
whether the court below’s view is clearly wrong. That
does not mean the state court’s decision is wholly irrelevant: It is common sense that, all else equal, a finding is