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Page Number: 100.0

4 

ALLEN v. MILLIGAN 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

majority-minority district is “compact.”  Neither the Voting 
Rights Act (VRA) nor the Constitution imposes a compact-
ness  requirement.    The  Court  notes  that  we  have  struck 
down bizarrely shaped districts, ante, at 19–20, but we did 
not do that for esthetic reasons.  Compactness in and of it-
self is not a legal requirement—or even necessarily an es-
thetic one.  (Some may find fancifully shaped districts more 
pleasing to the eye than boring squares.) 
  The same is true of departures from other traditional dis-
tricting criteria.  Again, nothing in the Constitution or the 
VRA demands compliance with these criteria.  If a whimsi-
cal state  legislature  cavalierly disregards county  and  mu-
nicipal  lines  and  communities  of  interest,  draws  weirdly 
shaped districts, departs radically from a prior map solely 
for the purpose of change, and forces many incumbents to 
run  against  each  other,  neither  the  Constitution  nor  the 
VRA  would  make  any  of  that  illegal  per  se.    Bizarrely 
shaped districts and other marked departures from tradi-
tional districting criteria matter because mapmakers usu-
ally  heed  these  criteria,  and  when  it  is  evident  that  they 
have not done so, there is reason to suspect that something 
untoward—specifically,  unconstitutional  racial  gerryman-
dering—is  afoot.    See,  e.g.,  Shaw  v.  Reno,  509  U. S.  630, 
643–644  (1993);  Bush  v.  Vera,  517  U. S.  952,  979  (1996) 
(plurality opinion); cf. LULAC, 548 U. S., at 433–435. 
  Conspicuous  violations  of  traditional  districting  criteria 
constitute strong circumstantial evidence of unconstitution-
ality.  And when it is shown that the configuration of a dis-
trict  is  attributable  predominantly  to  race,  that  is  more 
than circumstantial evidence that the district is unlawful.  
That is direct evidence of illegality because, as we have of-
ten held, race may not “predominate” in the drawing of dis-
trict lines.  See, e.g., Cooper, 581 U. S., at 292; Bethune-Hill 
v.  Virginia  State  Bd.  of  Elections,  580  U. S.  178,  191–192 
(2017);  Shaw  v.  Hunt,  517  U. S.  899,  906–907  (1996)