Cite as: 515 U. S. 900 (1995)
Syllabus
tional wrong or a threshold requirement of proof, but because it may be persuasive circumstantial evidence that race for its own sake, and not other districting principles, was a legislature's dominant and controlling rationale in drawing district lines. In some exceptional cases, a reap-portionment plan may be so highly irregular that, on its face, it rationally cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to segregate voters based on race, but where the district is not so bizarre, parties may rely on other evidence to establish race-based districting. The very stereotypical assumptions the Equal Protection Clause forbids underlie the argument that the Clause's general proscription on race-based decisionmaking does not obtain in the districting context because redistricting involves racial consideration. While redistricting usually implicates a political calculus in which various interests compete for recognition, it does not follow that individuals of the same race share a single political interest. Nor can the analysis used to assess the vote dilution claim in United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v. Carey, 430 U. S. 144, be applied to resuscitate this argument. Pp. 910-915. (b) Courts must exercise extraordinary caution in adjudicating claims that a State has drawn race-based district lines. The plaintiff must show, whether through circumstantial evidence of a district's shape and demographics or more direct evidence of legislative purpose, that race was the predominant factor motivating the legislature's decision to place a significant number of voters within or without a district. To make this showing, a plaintiff must prove that the legislature subordinated traditional race-neutral districting principles, including but not limited to compactness, contiguity, respect for political subdivisions or communities defined by actual shared interests, to racial considerations. Pp. 915-917. (c) The District Court applied the correct analysis here, and its finding that race was the predominant factor motivating the Eleventh District's drawing was not clearly erroneous. It need not be decided whether the district's shape, standing alone, was sufficient to establish that the district is unexplainable on grounds other than race, for there is considerable additional evidence showing that the state legislature was motivated by a predominant, overriding desire to create a third majority-black district in order to comply with the Justice Department's preclearance demands. The District Court's well-supported finding justified its rejection of the various alternative explanations offered for the district. Appellants cannot refute the claim of racial gerrymandering by arguing the legislature complied with traditional districting principles, since those factors were subordinated to racial objectives. Nor are there tangible communities of interest spanning the district's hundreds of miles that can be called upon to rescue the plan. Since race
901
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