Cite as: 528 U. S. 320 (2000)
Opinion of Souter, J.
hearing on the plan one week later, attended by an over-flow crowd, a number of black voters spoke against the plan, and Price presented the Board with a petition bearing over 500 signatures urging consideration of minority concerns. No one spoke in favor of the plan, Bossier Parish I, 907 F. Supp. 434, 439 (DC 1995), and Price explained to the Board that preclearance of the jury plan for use by the Police Jury was no guarantee of preclearance of the same plan for the Board. App. to Juris. Statement 180a-181a (Stipulation 108). Nonetheless, at its October 1 meeting, the voting members of the Board unanimously adopted the Police Jury plan, with one member absent and the Board's only black member (who had been appointed just two weeks earlier to fill a vacancy) abstaining. Id., at 181a-182a (Stipulation 109). The Board did not submit the plan for preclearance by the Attorney General until January 4, 1993. Id., at 182a (Stipulation 110).
II
The significance of the record under § 5 is enhanced by examining in more detail several matters already mentioned as free from dispute, by testing some of the Board's stated reasons for refusing to consider any NAACP plan, and by looking critically at the District Court's reasons for resolving disputed issues in the School Board's favor.
A
The parties stipulate that for decades before this redistricting the Board had sought to "limit or evade" its obligation to end segregation in its schools, an obligation specifically imposed by Court order nearly 35 years ago and not yet fulfilled. The Board has also conceded the discriminatory impact of the Police Jury plan in falling "more heavily on blacks than on whites," Plaintiff's Brief on Remand in Civ. Action No. 94-1495 (D. D. C.), p. 12, and in diluting "black voting strength," id., at 21. Even without the stipulated history, the conceded dilution would be evidence of a corre-
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