Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017) 7 Opinion of the Court the design of District 1. See Harris v. McCrory, 159 F. Supp. 3d 600, 611 (MDNC 2016). And in then applying strict scrutiny, all rejected the State’s argument that it had a “strong basis” for thinking that the VRA compelled such a race-based drawing of District 1’s lines. Id., at 623. As for District 12, a majority of the panel held that “race predominated” over all other factors, including partisanship. Id., at 622. And the court explained that the State had failed to put forward any reason, compelling or otherwise, for its attention to race in designing that district. See ibid. Judge Osteen dissented from the conclusion that race, rather than politics, drove District 12’s lines—yet still characterized the majority’s view as “[e]minently reasonable.” Id., at 640. The State filed a notice of appeal, and we noted probable jurisdiction. McCrory v. Harris, 579 U. S. ___ (2016). II We address at the outset North Carolina’s contention that a victory it won in a very similar state-court lawsuit should dictate (or at least influence) our disposition of this case. As the State explains, the North Carolina NAACP and several other civil rights groups challenged Districts 1 and 12 in state court immediately after their enactment, charging that they were unlawful racial gerrymanders. See Brief for Appellants 19–20. By the time the plaintiffs before us filed this action, the state trial court, in Dickson v. Rucho, had rejected those claims—finding that in District 1 the VRA justified the General Assembly’s use of race and that in District 12 race was not a factor at all. See App. 1969. The North Carolina Supreme Court then affirmed that decision by a 4–3 vote, applying the statecourt equivalent of clear error review. See Dickson v. Rucho, 368 N. C. 481, 500, 781 S. E. 2d 404, 419 (2015), modified on denial of reh’g, 368 N. C. 673, 789 S. E. 2d 436 (2016), cert. pending, No. 16–24. In this Court, North