4 ABBOTT v. PEREZ Syllabus e.g., to the need to “cure” the earlier Legislature’s “taint” and concluding that the Legislature had engaged in no deliberative process to do so. This fundamentally flawed approach must be reversed. Pp. 21– 25. (b) Both the 2011 Legislature’s intent and the court’s interim plans are relevant to the extent that they give rise to—or tend to refute—inferences about the 2013 Legislature’s intent, but they must be weighed together with other relevant direct and circumstantial evidence of the Legislature’s intent. But when this evidence is taken into account, the evidence in the record is plainly insufficient to prove that the 2013 Legislature acted in bad faith and engaged in intentional discrimination. Pp. 25–32. 3. Once the Texas court’s intent finding is reversed, there remain only four districts that were invalidated on alternative grounds. The Texas court’s holding as to the three districts in which it relied on §2’s “effects” test are reversed, but its holding that HD90 is a racial gerrymander is affirmed. Pp. 32–41. (a) To make out a §2 “effects” claim, a plaintiff must establish the three “Gingles factors”: (1) a geographically compact minority population sufficient to constitute a majority in a single-member district, (2) political cohesion among the members of the minority group, and (3) bloc voting by the majority to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate. Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 48–51. A plaintiff who makes that showing must then prove that, under the totality of the circumstances, the district lines dilute the votes of the members of the minority group. Pp. 33–39. (1) The Texas court held that CD27 violates §2 because it has the effect of diluting the votes of Nueces County Latino voters, who, the court concluded, should have been included in a Latino opportunity district rather than CD27, which is not such a district. Plaintiffs, however, could not show that an additional Latino opportunity district could be created in that part of Texas. Pp. 33–35. (2) The Texas court similarly erred in holding that HD32 and HD34, which make up the entirety of Nueces County, violate §2. The 2013 plan created two districts that lie wholly within the county: HD34 is a Latino opportunity district, but HD32 is not. The court’s findings show that these two districts do not violate §2, and it is hard to see how the ultimate Gingles vote dilution standard could be met if the alternative plan would not enhance the ability of minority voters to elect the candidates of their choice. Pp. 35–38. (b) HD90 is an impermissible racial gerrymander. HD90 was not copied from the Texas court’s interim plans. Instead, the 2013 legislature substantially modified that district. In 2011, the Legislature, responding to pressure from counsel to one of the plaintiff groups, in-