Cite as: 532 U. S. 234 (2001)
Thomas, J., dissenting
cratic voters. And regardless of whether the e-mail tended to show that the legislature was operating under an even stronger racial motivation when it was drawing District 1 than when it was drawing District 12, cf. ibid., I am convinced that the District Court permissibly could have accorded great weight to this e-mail as direct evidence of a racial motive. Surely, a decision can be racially motivated even if another decision was also racially motivated.
If I were the District Court, I might have reached the same conclusion that the Court does, that "[t]he evidence taken together . . . does not show that racial considerations predominated in the drawing of District 12's boundaries," ante, at 257. But I am not the trier of fact, and it is not my role to weigh evidence in the first instance. The only question that this Court should decide is whether the District Court's finding of racial predominance was clearly erroneous. In light of the direct evidence of racial motive and the inferences that may be drawn from the circumstantial evidence, I am satisfied that the District Court's finding was permissible, even if not compelled by the record.
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