The Court reasoned that laws requiring racial separation were within Louisiana's police power: the core sovereign authority of U.S. states to pass laws on matters of "health, safety, and morals". It held that as long as a law that classified and separated people by their race was a reasonable and good faith exercise of a state's police power, and was not designed to oppress a particular class, the law was legal. According to the Court, the question in any case of racial segregation laws like "Plessy" was whether the law was reasonable, and the Court gave great discretion to State legislatures to determine the reasonableness of the laws they passed.