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.
When coding the detailed nature of participants, use your personal knowledge about the participants, if you are completely confident of the accuracy of your knowledge, even if the specific information is not in the opinion. For example, if "IBM" is listed as the appellant it could be classified as "clearly national or international in scope" even if the opinion did not indicate the scope of the business. 
Your task is to determine the nature of the first listed respondent.

Opinion:
Timothy MAY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Louis W. SULLIVAN, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Defendant-Appellee. Janet PHILLIPS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Louis W. SULLIVAN, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Defendant-Appellee.
Nos. 90-1735, 90-1736.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued Oct. 30, 1990.
Decided June 26, 1991.
Martin Douglas Wegbreit, Client Centered Legal Services of Southwest Virginia, Inc., Castlewood, Va., for plaintiffs-appellants.
Margaret J. Krecke, Office of Gen. Counsel, Dept, of Health and Human Services, Philadelphia, Pa., argued (Beverly Dennis, III, Chief Counsel, Region III, Charlotte Hardnett, Chief, Social Security Litigation Div., Robert S. Drum, Asst. Regional Counsel, Office of Gen. Counsel, Dept, of Health and Human Services, Philadelphia, Pa., John P. Alderman, U.S. Atty., Jean M. Barrett, Asst. U.S. Atty., Roanoke, Va., on brief), for defendant-appellee.
Before ERVIN, Chief Judge, WIDENER, Circuit Judge, and HADEN, Chief District Judge for the Southern District of West Virginia, sitting by designation.
PER CURIAM:
In this consolidated appeal, Timothy May and Janet Phillips challenge the amount of their awards of attorneys’ fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA). Under the EAJA, a court shall award attorneys’ fees to a prevailing party in certain civil actions against the United States unless it finds that the government’s position was substantially justified or that special circumstances make an award unjust. 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(A). The district court determined that both May and Phillips were prevailing parties and that the government’s position was not substantially justified. 729 F.Supp. 1571. These findings are not contested on appeal, nor does the government contest the reasonableness of the hours claimed in the fee applications. May and Phillips do, however, contend that although they were awarded attorneys’ fees at the statutory rate of $75 per hour, the district court erred when it decided not to make an upward adjustment for increases in the cost of living as it was authorized to do by the EAJA. We affirm.
The EAJA provides, in relevant part, that “attorney fees shall not be awarded in excess of $75 per hour unless the court determines that an increase in the cost of living or a special factor ... justifies a higher fee.” 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(2)(A)(ii). The district courts have discretion to determine a reasonable fee award, and we will reverse such decisions only for abuse of that discretion. Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U.S. 552, 571, 108 S.Ct. 2541, 2553, 101 L.Ed.2d 490 (1988).
The sole evidence offered below to justify an increase in the statutory cap was the fact that the Consumer Price Index indicated that an increase in the cost of living occurred between the enactment of the statute and the date of the fee award. The district court found that this reason alone did not warrant an increase.
May and Phillips concede that the decision to award a cost of living adjustment is within the discretion of the district court. They contend, however, that the failure to award an upward adjustment when an increase in the cost of living can be demonstrated by an increase in the Consumer Price Index, constitutes an abuse of discretion. While it is true that upward adjustments are frequently given, that fact does not translate into a requirement that they be made in all cases. In fact the cases principally relied upon by May and Phillips for the proposition that upward adjustments should be made except in unusual circumstances recognize this. See Animal Lovers Volunteer Ass’n, Inc. v. Carlucci, 867 F.2d 1224, 1227 (9th Cir.1989); Baker v. Bowen, 839 F.2d 1075, 1082-84 (5th Cir.1988). Bowen specifically states that “while the statute clearly allows an adjustment for changes in the cost of living, it does not absolutely require it.” Bowen, 839 F.2d at 1084 (emphasis in original). Although in slightly different context, it has been authoritatively stated that to “hold otherwise would render the cap nothing more than advisory despite Congress’ expressed intent to permit higher awards only in rare cases.” Pierce, 487 U.S. at 579-80, 108 S.Ct. at 2557 (Justice Brennan, concurring).
Simply stated, May and Phillips’ request would, in effect, have us go against that intent and rewrite the statute to mandate cost of living adjustments. We decline this invitation. Congress is quite capable of requiring mandatory fee increases to account for changes in the Consumer Price Index and, as the statute quoted above shows, this it has not done. Section 2412(d)(2)(A) leaves the decision of whether to award fees in excess of the statutory cap in the sound discretion of the district judge, and we are of opinion that the refusal to grant an upward adjustment, when presented with nothing except an increase in the Consumer Price Index, does not constitute an abuse of that discretion. As the district court pointed out in its opinion in the May case, even “need for a cost of living increase” was not asserted.
May requested reimbursement for 25.8 hours in his EAJA fee application. Due to an apparent typographical error, the fee award was calculated for only 24.8 hours. Because the parties do not dispute the reasonableness of the hours claimed in the fee applications, May’s fee award is modified to award 25.8 hours of attorney time at the statutory cap rate of $75 per hour.
Accordingly, the judgments of the district court awarding attorneys’ fees to May and Phillips are
AFFIRMED AS MODIFIED.

Question: What is the nature of the first listed respondent?

Choices:
private business (including criminal enterprises)
private organization or association
federal government (including DC)
sub-state government (e.g., county, local, special district)
state government (includes territories & commonwealths)
government - level not ascertained
natural person (excludes persons named in their official capacity or who appear because of a role in a private organization)
miscellaneous
not ascertained

Answer: 2