This work is concerned with basic structural properties of first-order hyperbolic systems with source terms divided by a small parameter ε. We identify a relaxation criterion necessary for the solution sequences indexed with ε to have reasonable limits as ε goes to zero. This relaxation criterion is shown to imply hyperbolicity of the reduced systems governing the limits. Moreover, we introduce a so-called GC-stability theory and strengthen the hyperbolicity result. The latter shows that there are no linearly stable hyperbolic relaxation approximations for non-hyperbolic conservation laws.