18 COOPER v. HARRIS Opinion of the Court mistake. Accordingly, we uphold the District Court’s conclusion that North Carolina’s use of race as the predominant factor in designing District 1 does not withstand strict scrutiny. IV We now look west to District 12, making its fifth(!) appearance before this Court. This time, the district’s legality turns, and turns solely, on which of two possible reasons predominantly explains its most recent reconfiguration. The plaintiffs contended at trial that the General Assembly chose voters for District 12, as for District 1, because of their race; more particularly, they urged that the Assembly intentionally increased District 12’s BVAP in the name of ensuring preclearance under the VRA’s §5. But North Carolina declined to mount any defense (similar to the one we have just considered for District 1) that §5’s requirements in fact justified race-based changes to District 12—perhaps because §5 could not reasonably be understood to have done so, see n. 10, infra. Instead, the State altogether denied that racial considerations accounted for (or, indeed, played the slightest role in) District 12’s redesign. According to the State’s version of events, Senator Rucho, Representative Lewis, and Dr. Hofeller moved voters in and out of the district as part of a “strictly” political gerrymander, without regard to race. 6 Record 1011. The mapmakers drew their lines, in other words, to “pack” District 12 with Democrats, not AfricanAmericans. After hearing evidence supporting both parties’ accounts, the District Court accepted the plaintiffs’.6 —————— 6 JUSTICE ALITO charges us with “ignor[ing]” the State’s politicalgerrymander defense, making our analysis “like Hamlet without the prince.” Post, at 20 (opinion concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part) (hereinafter dissent); see post, at 20, 34. But we simply take the State’s account for what it is: one side of a thoroughly twosided case (and, as we will discuss, the side the District Court rejected,