Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21a375_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 16

Cite as:  595 U. S. ____ (2022) 

7 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

that Alabama’s redistricting plan “substantially likely vio-
lates  Section  Two.”   Id.,  at  196,  236.   Indeed, the District 
Court did “not regard the question” whether the plaintiffs 
were “substantially likely to prevail on the merits of their 
Section Two claim as a close one.”  Id., at 195. 

II 
  Alabama  insists  that  the  District  Court’s  decision  is 
wrong,  even  though  the  State  does  not  contest  any  of  the 
findings outlined above.  Alabama does not argue, for exam-
ple,  that  its  enacted  plan  performs  better  than  the  plain-
tiffs’  proposed  plans  when  measured  against  traditional 
districting criteria like compactness.  Rather, Alabama ar-
gues that the proposed plans do not satisfy the first Gingles 
condition because the plaintiffs’ experts did not draw them 
with race wholly out of mind—“using only race-neutral cri-
teria.”  Application in No. 21A375, p. 19 (Application).  The 
State  would  essentially  require  the  plaintiffs  to  demon-
strate that modern map-drawing software, designed to give 
no  attention  at  all  to  race,  would  produce  maps  with  two 
majority-Black districts.  See id., at 25–26. 
  But in making that claim, the State seeks to graft onto 
the VRA a new requirement, lacking any foundation in our 
precedent.  The first Gingles condition (recall only the ini-
tial step in a much larger analysis) asks a question specifi-
cally about race: Is a minority group “sufficiently large and 
geographically compact to constitute a majority” in an ad-
ditional district, consistent with traditional districting cri-
teria?  Growe, 507 U. S., at 40; see supra, at 3.  Consistent 
with  the  nature  of  that  question,  the  plaintiffs  here  did 
what plaintiffs in a Section 2 case have always done: They 
hired  experts  and  charged them with the  task  of  drawing 
maps  with  another  reasonably  configured  majority-Black 
district.  That has been the very project of the first Gingles 
condition:  If  plaintiffs  cannot  produce  such  illustrative 
maps—showing that what they are asking for is possible—