Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21a375_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 14.0

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

5 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Court found that the plaintiffs’ 11 illustrative plans (each 
with a second majority-Black district) complied with tradi-
tional  districting  criteria  as  well  as  or  better  than  Ala-
bama’s enacted plan.  As the court explained, the plaintiffs’ 
proposed plans “have nearly zero population deviation, in-
clude only contiguous districts, include districts that are at 
least  as  geographically  compact  as  those  in  [Alabama’s] 
Plan,  respect  traditional  boundaries  and  subdivisions  at 
least as much as [Alabama’s] Plan, protect important com-
munities of interest, [and] protect incumbents where possi-
ble.”    App.  173.    Alabama’s  efforts  to  rebut  the  plaintiffs’ 
showing  hinged  on  an  expert  to  whom  the  District  Court 
gave “very little weight.”  Id., at 152.  The court explained 
that his testimony was riddled with “internal inconsisten-
cies and vacillations,” and that he often “offered an opinion 
without a sufficient basis (or in some instances any basis).”  
Id., at 153, 155–156.  And even that expert had to concede 
that, as to compactness, the plaintiffs’ plans “perform gen-
erally better on average” than the enacted state plan.  Id., 
at 158.  Faced with that mountain of evidence, the District 
Court  found  the  first  Gingles  condition  met.    Indeed,  the 
court noted that just eyeballing the map of Alabama’s Black 
population  (as  printed  below)  shows  how  “eas[y]”  it  is—
given the shape of the Black Belt and the nearby locations 
of Birmingham and Mobile—to “draw two reasonably con-
figured majority-Black districts.”  App. 160–161. 

Figure 1.  Black Voting-Age Population Share