Cite as: 602 U. S. ____ (2024) 33 KAGAN, J., dissenting to all the same data Ragusa did. He even had access to Ragusa’s computer code, so that he would not have needed to start from scratch. See id., at 58. He could just have rerun the code after fixing whatever variables he thought wrong. What should one make of Trende’s failure to do so? If I were adopting the majority’s methods, I would draw an “adverse inference” from the decision not to submit such “easily churn[ed] out” evidence. Ante, at 30. Surely it must count as an “implicit concession” by the State that the statistical analysis, even with the desired fixes, would keep showing evidence of a racial gerrymander? Ante, at 31. But I don’t need to create a novel adverse inference to make the critical point. It was hardly clear error for the District Court to credit the Challengers’ statistical evidence about race’s predominant role when the State presented no similar evidence to support its partisanship theory. The majority’s contrary view—that the State’s nothing necessarily beat the Challengers’ something—is one more tell that it has left the proper review standard way behind. III In every way, the majority today stacks the deck against the Challengers. They must lose, the majority says, because the State had a “possible” story to tell about not considering race—even if the opposite story was the more credible. Ante, at 16. And they must lose again, the majority says, because they failed to offer a particular form of proof— which they did not know would be relevant and which this Court recently told plaintiffs was not required. It does not matter that the Challengers offered extensive evidence, including expert statistical analyses, that the State’s districting plan was the product of racial sorting. It does not matter that the State, by way of response, offered little more than strained and awkward denials. It does not matter that three judges—entitled to respect for their factual findings— thought that those denials were not believable, and did not

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