Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf
Page Number: 109.0

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

13 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

A 
  In  my  view,  there is strong  evidence  that race  played  a 
predominant  role  in the  production  of  the  plaintiffs’  illus-
trative maps and that it is most unlikely that a map with 
more than one majority-black district could be created with-
out giving race such a role.  An expert hired by the Milligan 
plaintiffs, Dr. Kosuke Imai, used a computer algorithm to 
create 30,000 potential maps, none of which contained two 
majority-black  districts.    See  2  App.  571–572;  Supp.  App. 
59, 72.  In fact, in 20,000 of those simulations, Dr. Imai in-
tentionally created one majority-minority district, and yet 
even  with  one  majority-minority  district  guaranteed  as  a 
baseline, none of those 20,000 attempts produced a second 
one.  See 2 App. 571–572; Supp. App. 72. 
  Similarly, Dr. Moon Duchin, another expert hired by the 
Milligan  plaintiffs,  opined  that  “it  is  hard  to  draw  two  
majority-black  districts  by  accident.”    2  App.  714.    Dr. 
Duchin  also  referred  to  a  study  where  she  generated  two 
million  maps  of  potential  district  configurations  in  Ala-
bama, none of which contained a second majority-minority 
district.  Id., at 710.  And the first team of trained mapmak-
ers that plaintiff Milligan consulted was literally unable to 
draw  a  two-majority-black-district  map,  even  when  they 
tried.  Id., at 511–512.  Milligan concluded at the time that 
the feat was impossible.  Id., at 512. 
  The majority quibbles about the strength of this evidence, 
protesting that Dr. Imai’s studies failed to include as con-
trols  certain  redistricting  criteria  and  that  Dr.  Duchin’s 
two-million-map study was based on 2010 census data, see 
ante, at 26–27, and nn. 6–7, but this is unconvincing for sev-
eral  reasons.    It  is  plaintiffs’  burden  to  produce  evidence 
and  satisfy  the  Gingles  preconditions,  so  if  their  experts’ 
maps  were  deficient,  that  is  no  strike  against  Alabama.  
And the racial demographics of the State changed little be-
tween 2010 and 2020, Supp. App. 82, which is presumably 
why Dr. Duchin herself raised the older study in answering