Cite as: 581 U. S. ____ (2017)
21
Opinion of the Court
In light of those principles, we uphold the District
Court’s finding of racial predominance respecting District
12. The evidence offered at trial, including live witness
testimony subject to credibility determinations, adequately
supports the conclusion that race, not politics, accounted
for the district’s reconfiguration. And no error of law
infected that judgment: Contrary to North Carolina’s view,
the District Court had no call to dismiss this challenge
just because the plaintiffs did not proffer an alternative
design for District 12 as circumstantial evidence of the
legislature’s intent.
A
Begin with some facts and figures, showing how the
redistricting of District 12 affected its racial composition.
As explained above, District 12 (unlike District 1) was
approximately the right size as it was: North Carolina did
not—indeed, could not—much change its total population.
See supra, at 6. But by further slimming the district and
adding a couple of knobs to its snakelike body (including
in Guilford County), the General Assembly incorporated
tens of thousands of new voters and pushed out tens of
thousands of old ones. And those changes followed racial
lines: To be specific, the new District 12 had 35,000 more
African-Americans of voting age and 50,000 fewer whites
of that age. (The difference was made up of voters from
other racial categories.) See ibid. Those voter exchanges
produced a sizable jump in the district’s BVAP, from
43.8% to 50.7%. See ibid. The Assembly thus turned
District 12 (as it did District 1, see supra, at 10–11) into a
majority-minority district.
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legislature’s good faith should be presumed “until a claimant makes a
showing sufficient to support th[e] allegation” of “race-based decisionmaking,” Miller, 515 U. S., at 915, for a kind of super-charged, proState presumption on appeal, trumping clear-error review. See post, at
11–12, n. 7.