Cite as: 602 U. S. ____ (2024) 31 Opinion of the Court to submit one. The adverse inference may be dispositive in many, if not most, cases where the plaintiff lacks direct evidence or some extraordinarily powerful circumstantial evidence such as the “strangely irregular twenty-eight-sided” district lines in Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339, 341 (1960), which betrayed the State’s aim of segregating voters on the basis of race with “mathematical” precision, ibid. The District Court, however, misunderstood our case law when it held that an alternative map is relevant only for the purpose of showing that a remedy is plausible. 49 F. Supp 3d, at 198–199. Because “a constitutionally compliant plan for [District 1] can be designed without undue difficulty,” the District Court concluded that it was “not necessary for Plaintiffs to present an acceptable alternative map to prevail on their claims.” Id., at 199. That is wrong. A plaintiff ’s failure to submit an alternative map—precisely because it can be designed with ease—should be interpreted by district courts as an implicit concession that the plaintiff cannot draw a map that undermines the legislature’s defense that the districting lines were “based on a permissible, rather than a prohibited, ground.” Cooper, 581 U. S., at 317. The District Court’s conclusions are clearly erroneous because it did not follow this basic logic. E Despite its length, the dissent boils down to six main points. None is valid. First, the dissent suggests that clear-error review is a perfunctory task, see post, at 10, but that is not so. While district court findings of fact are generally correct, conscientious district courts sometimes err, and appellants are entitled to meaningful appellate review. Does the dissent really think that all district court findings on the question of racial discrimination are virtually immune from reversal?