Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026) 33 Opinion of the Court IV Under the updated Gingles framework, the facts of this suit easily require affirmance. Louisiana’s enactment of SB8 triggered strict scrutiny because the State’s underlying goal was racial. The State never hid the ball: It configured District 6 to achieve a black voting-age population over 50% because it knew that if it failed to do so, the Robinson court would very likely find its map unlawful and order the use of something like the Robinson plaintiffs’ illustrative maps, which would have imperiled one of the influential incumbents the legislature sought to protect. The State’s intentional compliance with the court’s demands constituted an “express acknowledgment that race played a role in the drawing of district lines.” Alexander, 602 U. S., at 8. Louisiana therefore had to satisfy the “extraordinarily onerous” standard of proving that its use of race was narrowly tailored to further a compelling governmental interest. Id., at 11. No compelling interest justifies SB8. Section 2 does not provide a compelling interest because the State did not need to create a new majority-minority district to comply with the Act. That is because at every step of the Gingles framework, the Robinson plaintiffs failed to prove their §2 case. On the first Gingles precondition, the Robinson plaintiffs did not meet their burden because they did not provide an illustrative map that met all the State’s nonracial goals. The most obvious deficit in the plaintiffs’ illustrative maps was the failure to meet the State’s political goals, including incumbency protection. The plaintiffs’ preferred map would have placed Representative Letlow in a majorityDemocratic district and thus effectively ensured her exit from Congress. See Brief for Appellant in No. 24–109, at 14; 2 App. to Juris. Statement in No. 24–110, p. 673a (placing Representative Letlow in a district with over twice as many registered Democrats as registered Republicans).