574
Opinion of the Court
no difference whether we grant the motion or not. . . . [I]f we granted your motion, we would be in this precise posture we are in now." Id., at 173. Appellant then argued that District 21, as redrawn in Plan 386, would still be unconstitutional because only race could explain its contours, see id., at 175-188, and counsel for a former state legislator spoke to the same effect, id., at 188-190.
On March 19, 1996, the District Court approved the settlement. See 920 F. Supp. 1248, 1257 (MD Fla. 1996). The panel majority first held that it was not obliged to find the existing District 21 unconstitutional in order to approve the settlement. While recognizing the need to "guard against any disingenuous adventures" by litigants, id., at 1252, n. 2, the majority noted that a State should not be deprived of the opportunity to avoid "an expensive and protracted contest and the possibility of an adverse and disruptive adjudication" by a rule insisting on "a public mea culpa" as the sole condition for dispensing with "a dispositive, specific determination of the controlling constitutional issue." Id., at 1252, and n. 2. To balance the competing interests, the court required a showing of a substantial "evidentiary and legal" basis for the plaintiffs' claim before the settlement would be approved, id., at 1252, and it held the standard satisfied. "Each party either states unequivocally that existing District 21 is unconstitutionally configured or concedes, for purposes of settlement, that the plaintiffs have established prima facie unconstitutionality." Id., at 1253, n. 3. The majority found that the "boundaries of current District 21 are markedly uneven and, in some respects, extraordinary," id., at 1253, and that the district "bears at least some of the conspicuous signs of a racially conscious contrivance," id., at 1255.
The District Court then turned to the merits of Plan 386 to determine whether its formation had been "dominated by the single-minded focus" on race that it understood to be constitutionally forbidden under Miller. 920 F. Supp., at
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