# Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP Supreme Court decision of **May 23, 2024**, 602 U.S. 1 (2024), reversing a three-judge district court's finding that South Carolina's First Congressional District was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. [[Samuel Alito]] wrote for a 6–3 Court. The doctrinal legacy is the **presumption of legislative good faith**, which *Alexander* strengthened into a thumb on the scale: the presumption "directs district courts to draw the inference that cuts in the legislature's favor when confronted with evidence that could plausibly support multiple conclusions." The opinion also held that a plaintiff alleging racial gerrymandering ordinarily must produce an alternative map showing the legislature could have achieved its political goals without the racial sorting. Both holdings became load-bearing two years later. In the June 2026 stay order in [[Allen v. Milligan]], the Court faulted the district court for failing to heed *Alexander*'s presumption — specifically for treating Alabama's "legal disagreement" with an earlier remedial order as evidence of discriminatory animus. In dissent, [[Sonia Sotomayor]] argued the district court had applied the presumption scrupulously and that if its finding was clear error, "there is no realistic case in which the presumption of legislative good faith can ever be rebutted." See [[Louisiana v. Callais]] and [[Gerrymandering]]. > [!note] Stub — fill out > This page was created as a stub during a source-verification pass on 2026-09-12. Audit and expand when convenient.