Page:Allen v. Milligan.pdf/68

Rh would not yield a race-neutral case for treating the plaintiffs’ approach as a suitable benchmark: Absent core retention, there is no apparent race-neutral reason to insist that District 7 remain a majority-black district uniting Birmingham’s majority-black neighborhoods with majority-black rural areas in the Black Belt.

Finally, it is surely probative that over 2 million race-neutral simulations did not yield a single plan with two majority-black districts, and even 20,000 simulations with a one-majority-black-district floor did not yield a second district with a black voting-age population over 40%. If any plan with two majority-black districts would be an “out-out-out-outlier” within the likely universe of race-neutral districting plans, Rucho, 588 U. S., at ___ (, dissenting) (slip op., at 19), it is hard to see how the mere possibility of drawing two majority-black districts could show that a one-district map diluted black Alabamians’ votes relative to any appropriate benchmark.