In May 1896, the Supreme Court issued a 7–1 decision against Plessy ruling that the Louisiana law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, stating that although the Fourteenth Amendment established the legal equality of white and black Americans, it did not and could not require the elimination of all social or other "distinctions based upon color". The Court rejected Plessy's lawyers' arguments that the Louisiana law inherently implied that black people were inferior, and gave great deference to American state legislatures' inherent power to make laws regulating health, safety, and moralsthe "police power"and to determine the reasonableness of the laws they passed. Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter from the Court's decision, writing that the U.S. Constitution "is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens", and so the law's distinguishing of passengers' races should have been found unconstitutional.