Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026) 29 Opinion of the Court In light of these significant developments, it is appropriate to update the Gingles framework and realign it with the text of §2 and constitutional principles. 1. First Gingles Precondition The first Gingles precondition is that a community of minority voters must be sufficiently numerous and compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district. To satisfy this precondition, many §2 plaintiffs have simply provided illustrative maps with their desired number of majority-minority districts. E.g., Allen, 599 U. S., at 20. Such maps, however, are not alone sufficient. They prove only that the State could create an additional majority-minority district, not that the State’s failure to do so violated §2 of the Voting Rights Act. To make the latter showing, plaintiffs’ illustrative maps must satisfy two conditions. First, in drawing illustrative maps, plaintiffs cannot use race as a districting criterion. If a plaintiff can produce an additional majority-minority district only by using race—a process that would be unconstitutional if a State engaged in such mapmaking, see Alexander, 602 U. S., at 6—that illustrative map sheds no light on whether the State acted unconstitutionally by not adopting such a map. Thus, an illustrative map in which race was used has no value in proving a §2 plaintiff ’s case. Second, illustrative maps must meet all the State’s legitimate districting objectives, including traditional districting criteria and the State’s specified political goals. If the State’s aims in drawing a map include a target partisan distribution of voters, a specific margin of victory for certain incumbents, or any other goal not prohibited by the Constitution, the plaintiffs’ illustrative maps must achieve these goals just as well. If not, the plaintiffs would fail to demonstrate that the State’s chosen map was driven by racial considerations rather than permissible aims. Only by meeting all the State’s legitimate objectives can the illustrative