Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 3 Opinion of ALITO, J. This is not the treatment of precedent that state legislatures have the right to expect from this Court. The failure to produce an alternative map doomed the challengers in Cromartie II, and the same should be true now. Partisan gerrymandering is always unsavory, but that is not the issue here. The issue is whether District 12 was drawn predominantly because of race. The record shows that it was not.1 I Under the Constitution, state legislatures have “the initial power to draw districts for federal elections.” Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U. S. 267, 275 (2004) (plurality opinion).2 This power, of course, must be exercised in conformity with the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. And because the Equal Protection Clause’s “central mandate is racial neutrality in governmental decisionmaking,” Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 904 (1995), “effort[s] to separate voters into different districts on the basis of race” must satisfy the rigors of strict scrutiny. Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 649, 653 (1993) (Shaw I ). We have stressed, however, that courts are obligated to “exercise extraordinary caution in adjudicating claims that a State has drawn district lines on the basis of race.” Miller, 515 U. S., at 916. “Federal-court review of districting legislation represents a serious intrusion on the most vital of local functions,” and “the good faith of a state legislature must be presumed.” Id., at 915. A legislature —————— 1 I concur in the judgment of the Court regarding Congressional District 1. The State concedes that the district was intentionally created as a majority-minority district. See Brief for Appellants 44. And appellants have not satisfied strict scrutiny. 2 Article I, §4, of the Constitution reserves to state legislatures the power to prescribe “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives,” subject to Congress’s authority to “make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”