Task: songer_r_fed

What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
In some cases there is some confusion over who should be listed as the appellant and who as the respondent. This confusion is primarily the result of the presence of multiple docket numbers consolidated into a single appeal that is disposed of by a single opinion. Most frequently, this occurs when there are cross appeals and/or when one litigant sued (or was sued by) multiple litigants that were originally filed in district court as separate actions. The coding rule followed in such cases should be to go strictly by the designation provided in the title of the case. The first person listed in the title as the appellant should be coded as the appellant even if they subsequently appeared in a second docket number as the respondent and regardless of who was characterized as the appellant in the opinion.
To clarify the coding conventions, consider the following hypothetical case in which the US Justice Department sues a labor union to strike down a racially discriminatory seniority system and the corporation (siding with the position of its union) simultaneously sues the government to get an injunction to block enforcement of the relevant civil rights law. From a district court decision that consolidated the two suits and declared the seniority system illegal but refused to impose financial penalties on the union, the corporation appeals and the government and union file cross appeals from the decision in the suit brought by the government. Assume the case was listed in the Federal Reporter as follows:
United States of America,
Plaintiff, Appellant
v
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendant, Appellee.
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendants, Cross-appellants
v
United States of America.
Widgets, Inc. & Susan Kuersten Sheehan, President & Chairman
of the Board
Plaintiff, Appellants,
v
United States of America,
Defendant, Appellee.
This case should be coded as follows:Appellant = United States, Respondents = International Brotherhood of Widget Workers Widgets, Inc., Total number of appellants = 1, Number of appellants that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials" = 1, Total number of respondents = 3, Number of respondents that fall into the category "private business and its executives" = 2, Number of respondents that fall into the category "groups and associations" = 1.
Note that if an individual is listed by name, but their appearance in the case is as a government official, then they should be counted as a government rather than as a private person. For example, in the case "Billy Jones & Alfredo Ruiz v Joe Smith" where Smith is a state prisoner who brought a civil rights suit against two of the wardens in the prison (Jones & Ruiz), the following values should be coded: number of appellants that fall into the category "natural persons" =0 and number that fall into the category "state governments, their agencies, and officials" =2. A similar logic should be applied to businesses and associations. Officers of a company or association whose role in the case is as a representative of their company or association should be coded as being a business or association rather than as a natural person. However, employees of a business or a government who are suing their employer should be coded as natural persons. Likewise, employees who are charged with criminal conduct for action that was contrary to the company policies should be considered natural persons.
If the title of a case listed a corporation by name and then listed the names of two individuals that the opinion indicated were top officers of the same corporation as the appellants, then the number of appellants should be coded as three and all three were coded as a business (with the identical detailed code). Similar logic should be applied when government officials or officers of an association were listed by name.
Your specific task is to determine the total number of respondents in the case that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials". If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the respondent is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

PER CURIAM:
Plaintiff Herbert Thomas, a New York State prisoner, appeals from a final judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Charles L. Brieant, Chief Judge, dismissing his pro se complaint which contended that his rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution were violated by a policy promulgated by defendant Charles Scully, Superintendent of Green Haven Correctional Facility, prohibiting inmates from possessing noncommercial nude photographs. Thomas complained that prison officials, pursuant to that policy, confiscated nude photographs mailed to him by his girlfriend and returned them to the sender. The district court, sua sponte, dismissed the complaint pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) and 28 U.S.C. § 1915(d) (1988) on the ground that the regulation was rationally related to the goal of maintaining prison security, and thus Thomas’s claim did not rise to the level of a constitutional violation. On appeal, now represented by appointed counsel, Thomas contends that the court erred (1) in ruling on the complaint without giving him an opportunity to be heard, and (2) in concluding that the challenged regulation was permissible. For the reasons below, we agree with the procedural contention and remand for further consideration of the merits.
Though the district court has the power to dismiss a complaint sua sponte for failure to state a claim on which relief can be granted, it may not properly do so without giving the plaintiff an opportunity to be heard. See, e.g., Perez v. Ortiz, 849 F.2d 793, 797 (2d Cir.1988); 5A C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1357, at 301 (1990) (“court on its own initiative may note the inadequacy of the complaint and dismiss it for failure to state a claim as long as the procedure employed is fair”). Section 1915(d) gives the court the power to dismiss a pro se complaint sua sponte if the complaint is frivolous. A complaint may fail to state a claim on which relief may be granted without being frivolous. Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 109 S.Ct. 1827, 1832, 104 L.Ed.2d 338 (1989).
There is no suggestion in the decision of the district court that the complaint in the present case was frivolous, and we conclude that it was not frivolous. Thus dismissal pursuant to § 1915(d) was inappropriate. We also conclude that the dismissal pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) was inappropriate, both because it was sua sponte and thus gave Thomas no opportunity to defend the complaint, and because, whatever its merit, the complaint did state a claim on which relief could be granted. The district court’s rationale that the regulation adopted by the defendant was reasonable and valid went beyond the face of the complaint and addressed the merits of the case.
Accordingly, we vacate the judgment of dismissal and remand to the district court for proceedings addressing the merits of Thomas’s complaint. We suggest that the district court continue the appointment of counsel for Thomas in connection with those further proceedings.
No costs.

Question: What is the total number of respondents in the case that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officialss"? Answer with a number.
Answer:

Answer: 0