244
Opinion of the Court
this litigation, heard the testimony of each witness, and considered all the evidence with care. Nonetheless, we cannot accept the District Court's findings as adequate for reasons which we shall spell out in detail and which we can summarize as follows:
First, the primary evidence upon which the District Court relied for its "race, not politics," conclusion is evidence of voting registration, not voting behavior; and that is precisely the kind of evidence that we said was inadequate the last time this case was before us. See infra, at 245-246. Second, the additional evidence to which appellees' expert, Dr. Weber, pointed, and the statements made by Senator Cooper and Gerry Cohen, simply do not provide significant additional support for the District Court's conclusion. See infra, at 246-250, 253-254. Third, the District Court, while not accepting the contrary conclusion of appellants' expert, Dr. Peterson, did not (and as far as the record reveals, could not) reject much of the significant supporting factual information he provided. See infra, at 251-253. Fourth, in any event, appellees themselves have provided us with charts summarizing evidence of voting behavior and those charts tend to refute the court's "race, not politics," conclusion. See infra, at 254-257; Appendixes, infra.
A
The District Court primarily based its "race, not politics," conclusion upon its finding that "the legislators excluded many heavily-Democratic precincts from District 12, even when those precincts immediately border the Twelfth and would have established a far more compact district." 133 F. Supp. 2d, at 419; see also id., at 420 ("[M]ore heavily Democratic precincts . . . were bypassed . . . in favor of precincts with a higher African-American population"). This finding, however—insofar as it differs from the remaining four— rests solely upon evidence that the legislature excluded heavily white precincts with high Democratic Party registra-
Page: Index Previous 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007