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4  GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP, INC. v. ARKANSAS TEACHER 

RETIREMENT SYSTEM 
Opinion of GORSUCH, J. 

“elusive,” the Court has created a presumption.  See id., at 
506 (internal quotation marks omitted).  If a plaintiff proves 
certain  “predicate  fact[s]”—for  example,  that  he  is  black,
that he was fired from a job for which he was qualified, and 
that the job remained open and was ultimately filled by a
white  person—an  inference  or  presumption  of  intentional
discrimination  arises.  Ibid.    At  that  point,  the  defendant 
bears the burden of producing evidence that, if accepted as
true, shows it fired the plaintiff for only legitimate business 
reasons.  Id.,  at  506–507.  Should  that  happen,  the  pre-
sumption of intentional discrimination disappears and the
trier of fact must weigh the parties’ competing proof.  Id., at 
510–511.  None  of  that  means  the  plaintiff ’s  indirect  evi-
dence of discrimination also disappears.  It simply means
the trier of fact must consider any inferences arising from
that  indirect  evidence  while  also  considering  the  defend-
ant’s  evidence  and  any  other  proof  the  plaintiff  submits.
See id., at 511.  “[A]t all times” throughout the litigation, 
however,  the  plaintiff  bears  the  “ultimate  burden  of  per-
suading the trier of fact that he has been the victim of in-
tentional discrimination.”  Id., at 507–508 (brackets and in-
ternal quotation marks omitted).

Since the Court first started tangling with the fraud on
the market theory in Basic, it has followed these traditional 
rules.  Consistently,  our  decisions  have  “made  clear”  that 
Basic’s “presumption” of reliance is “just that.”  Halliburton 
I, 563 U. S., at 811.  Much as the Court said it created the 
Title VII presumption to help prove the “elusive” question 
of intentional discrimination, Basic said it created its pre-
sumption of reliance to relieve “an unnecessarily unrealis-
tic evidentiary burden” on securities fraud plaintiffs.  485 
U. S., at 245.  And when creating its presumption Basic ex-
pressly cited Rule 301.  Ibid.
  The  process  Basic  outlined  matches  traditional  under-
standings too.  The Court explained that a plaintiff ’s ability
to prove certain “threshold facts”—about market operations