Alito, J., dissenting
majority-minority district is “compact.” Neither the Voting Rights Act (VRA) nor the Constitution imposes a compactness requirement. The Court notes that we have struck down bizarrely shaped districts, ante, at 19–20, but we did not do that for esthetic reasons. Compactness in and of itself is not a legal requirement—or even necessarily an esthetic one. (Some may find fancifully shaped districts more pleasing to the eye than boring squares.)
The same is true of departures from other traditional districting criteria. Again, nothing in the Constitution or the VRA demands compliance with these criteria. If a whimsical state legislature cavalierly disregards county and municipal lines and communities of interest, draws weirdly shaped districts, departs radically from a prior map solely for the purpose of change, and forces many incumbents to run against each other, neither the Constitution nor the VRA would make any of that illegal per se. Bizarrely shaped districts and other marked departures from traditional districting criteria matter because mapmakers usually heed these criteria, and when it is evident that they have not done so, there is reason to suspect that something untoward—specifically, unconstitutional racial gerrymandering—is afoot. See, e.g., Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 643–644 (1993); Bush v. Vera, 517 U. S. 952, 979 (1996) (plurality opinion); cf. LULAC, 548 U. S., at 433–435.
Conspicuous violations of traditional districting criteria constitute strong circumstantial evidence of unconstitutionality. And when it is shown that the configuration of a district is attributable predominantly to race, that is more than circumstantial evidence that the district is unlawful. That is direct evidence of illegality because, as we have often held, race may not “predominate” in the drawing of district lines. See, e.g., Cooper, 581 U. S., at 292; Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Bd. of Elections, 580 U. S. 178, 191–192 (2017); Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U. S. 899, 906–907 (1996)
