Shannon Suzanne Broome

Broome leads her firm’s environmental practice in California representing many large companies and trade groups in the oil and gas, chemical, automotive and paper industries.

An expert on the Clean Air Act, she frequently engages with regulators and activists on concerns over air quality and climate.

Her watchwords in those cases are notice, fairness and process for her clients, she said.

Another word she likes is implementability. After all, if a company can’t translate a regulation into operation, “then what good does that do?”

A good example of those guiding principles is a decision from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March that upholds a 2002 Environmental Protection Administration regulation challenged by New Jersey as too lax. The rule deals with how companies report on and manage plant expansions if there is no “reasonable possibility” the project will significantly increase emissions. Broome’s clients, a group of national trade associations, supported the EPA. New Jersey v. EPA, 08-1065 (D.C. Cir., opn. March 5, 2021)

The core dispute turned on fairness, notice and transparency, she said. Her clients thought the rule represented a reasonable balancing.

In a more striking example of those core concerns, Broome represents several companies facing penalties from the EPA and the California Air Resources Board for making or selling aftermarket auto parts that convert ordinary cars into race cars.

The question is what constitutes a race car, which is not under the EPA’s jurisdiction. The agency’s position in some of the litigation is that to qualify as a race car, it must have been built as one, not converted from a street-legal car, according to Broome.

“That ignores reality. That ignores the history of racing,” she said.

Worse still, in her opinion, is that EPA first disclosed its position buried in an unrelated rule about emissions from heavy-duty trucks. “This is about fairness and notice,” she said.

A former chemical engineer, Broome is the co-president of the Women’s Energy Network’s new chapter in California, which she helped launch this year. “My passion is mentoring women in the energy industry,” she said. “That’s what I do for fun.”

— Don DeBenedictis