Walmart was not the only case in which Scalia weakened the ability of individuals to band together as a class to challenge corporate misconduct. In AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, a couple signed up for the company’s service with the advertised promise of “free” cell phones, but discovered a $30 charge on their bill for sales tax based on the phones’ retail value. In defending itself against a class action, AT&T pointed to the standard form contract the plaintiffs had signed, which required the arbitration of all disputes and barred class arbitration. The district court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to enforce this provision, recognizing that under California contract law it was unconscionable. Not so, according to Scalia’s majority opinion, which ruled that the Federal Arbitration Act preempted state contract law on this point. If consumers wanted to bring a claim against AT&T, they had to do so individually and through arbitration.

Scalia’s corporate legacy extends beyond his jurisprudence that weakened the class action and tilted the balance of power against workers and consumers. Of course, not all of his opinions favored corporations and business interests, but like the Roberts Court generally, his track record was on the whole pro-business. He has been ranked one of the top 10 most pro-business justices in modern U.S. history.

Just last year, for example, in Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency, a group of states and trade groups representing the electric power and coal mining industry challenged the EPA’s approach to implementing the Clean Air Act’s section on hazardous air pollutants. The EPA had interpreted its mandate as allowing it to make an initial determination that regulating power plant emissions was appropriate and necessary to protect public health and the environment, and then to consider costs when calculating the emissions standards to impose. Writing for a 5-4 majority, Scalia ruled that the EPA unreasonably delayed its cost-benefit analysis—costs to the power plants must be taken into account at the outset of the regulatory process.

Perhaps the case that will be most remembered in Scalia’s corporate legacy is Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Scalia joined the 5-4 majority, overturning previous campaign-finance precedents and holding that under the First Amendment corporations could make unlimited independent political expenditures. Super-PACs and a new era of politics were born. Citizens United represented a major expansion of the rights of corporations.

Scalia concurred, writing separately to battle with Justice John Paul Stevens’ 90-page dissent. Scalia criticized the “corporation-hating quotations the dissent has dredged up,” and argued that the text of the First Amendment “is written in terms of ‘speech,’ not speakers.” It “offers no foothold for excluding any category of speaker, from single individuals to partnerships of individuals, to unincorporated associations of individuals, to incorporated associations of individuals”—in other words, corporations.