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 appellants 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 appellant is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

Opinion:
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN’S & WAREHOUSEMEN’S UNION & LOCAL 27, Respondent.
No. 73-3239.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
April 15, 1975.
Elliott Moore, Asst. Gen. Counsel, NLRB, Joseph E. Mayer, Robert Fulton Dashiell, Attys., NLRB, and Morris R. Bond, Sequim, Wash., for petitioner.
Robert D. Duggan, Seattle, Wash, and Norman Leonard, San Francisco, Cal., for respondent.
Before DUNIWAY and KILKENNY, Circuit Judges, and SWEIGERT, District Judge.
The Honorable William T. Sweigert, Senior United States District Judge for the Northern District of California, sitting by designation.
OPINION
SWEIGERT, Senior District Judge:
This case is before the Court upon the application of the National Labor Relations Board (hereinafter Board), pursuant to Section 10(e) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended (29 U.S.C. § 151 et seq.) (hereinafter, Act), for enforcement of an order issued against the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) and its Local 27 on September 7, 1973 (205 NLRB No. 142), for violations of Sections 8(b)(2) and 8(b)(1)(A) of the Act (29 U.S.C. §§ 158(b)(2) and (b)(1)(A)).
On February 25, 1971, Morris Bond, a member of Local 27 and a registered longshoreman, was cited to appear before the Joint Port Labor Relations Committee of Port Angeles, California (hereinafter, Committee), upon several “no-show” complaints filed by his employers and a complaint brought by the union members of the Committee, charging Bond with the “threat of assault and use of abusive language” towards Leroy Jagger, who was then President of Local 27 and one of the three union members on the six-person Committee.
After separately disposing of the “no-show” complaints, the Committee considered the complaint concerning Bond’s conduct towards Jagger. With Jagger participating as a member of the Committee, the Committee reviewed the complaint and Bond’s entire work record, and decided to deregister Bond immediately, thus effectively depriving him of an opportunity to secure employment on the West Coast as a longshoreman.
On October 13, 1971, the Board, based upon an unfair labor practices charge which had been previously filed by Bond, issued a complaint against the ILWU and Local 27. Following a hearing on that complaint, an Administrative Law Judge found that the ILWU and Local 27, through the actions of the union members of the Committee, violated Sections 8(b)(2) and 8(b)(1)(A) of the Act by initiating the disciplinary action against and participating in the decision to dere-gister Bond because of personal antagonism between him and Leroy Jagger. More specifically, the Administrative Law Judge found that Jagger could be characterized as an “arrogant bully” who has frequently challenged other.men to fight, who has antagonized the younger longshoremen and who is particularly hostile towards Bond; that, but for the complaint brought concerning Bond’s conduct towards Jagger, Bond would not have been deregistered; that the union members sought Bond’s deregistration; and that the action of the Committee was prompted by a desire to appease Jagger.
The Administrative Law Judge declined to defer to an arbitrator’s decision of February 16, 1973, which was based on arbitration proceedings in which Bond was represented by the ILWU and which upheld the Committee’s decision to dere-gister Bond.
The Administrative Law Judge ordered both the ILWU and Local 27 to attempt to persuade the employer members of the Committee to agree to Bond’s re-registration and to make him whole for any loss of pay he suffered as a result of deregistration.
On September 7, 1973, a three-member panel of the Board affirmed the rulings, findings and conclusions of the Administrative Law Judge and adopted his order, further ordering that the union parties seek Bond’s reinstatement at any level available to them.
THE ACT
Section 8(b)(2) of the Act provides in effect that it shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents to cause an employer, by discrimination in regard to hire, tenure or any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization.
Section 8(b)(1)(A) provides in effect that it shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents to restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of their right to form and to join labor organizations and to engage in other concerted activities.
LAW
The findings of the Board should not be disturbed if, on the record as a whole, there is substantial evidence to support the findings (Universal Camera Corp. v. NLRB, 340 U.S. 474, 491, 71 S.Ct. 456, 95 L.Ed. 456 (1951)); findings on credibility should not be disturbed unless a clear preponderance of the evidence convinces that they are incorrect (NLRB v. Luisi Truck Lines, 384 F.2d 842, 846 (9th Cir. 1967)); findings on motivation for discharge may be based upon circumstantial as well as direct evidence and should not be disturbed where they are reasonable and supported by substantial evidence on the record as a whole (NLRB v. Miller Redwood Co., 407 F.2d 1366 (9th Cir. 1969)).
Applying those standards of review to the record herein, we conclude that there is substantial evidence to support the above-stated findings of the Board.
M A union’s refusal to refer an employee to any employer because of the employee’s “abusive” conduct toward a member of a union executive board has been held to be a violation of both Section 8(b)(2) and Section 8(b)(1)(A) of the Act. Lummus Co. v. NLRB, 119 U.S.App.D.C. 229, 339 F.2d 728, 734 (D.C.Cir. 1964). Similarly, it is a violation of Section 8(b)(2) for a union to cause the discharge of employees for being “disrespectful” to a union official. NLRB v. Hod Carriers & Construction Laborers’ Union, Local No. 300, AFL — CIO, 392 F.2d 581, 582 (9th Cir. 1968).
Accordingly, we conclude that it is a violation of Sections 8(b)(2) and 8(b)(1)(A) for a joint union-employer committee to deregister an employee where such deregistration is sought by the union because of the personal hostility of a union committee member towards the employee and where the deregistration is agreed to by the employer committee members in' order to appease the hostile union member.
It is established that local union members of a Joint Port Labor Relations Committee act as agents of the ILWU. Local 13, ILWU v. Pacific Maritime Association, 441 F.2d 1061 (9th Cir. 1971). Thus, in the instant action, the ILWU is liable for violations of the Act committed by the Local 27 union members of the Committee.
The Board may, in its discretion, defer to an arbitration award which relates to an unfair labor practice complaint pending before the Board. Carey v. Westinghouse, 375 U.S. 261, 271, 84 S.Ct. 401, 11 L.Ed.2d 320 (1964). It is not an abuse of that discretion, however, for the Board to decline to defer to an arbitration award which, as found by the Board in the instant action, does not resolve the issue of the unfair labor practice (John Klann Moving and Trucking Co. v. NLRB, 411 F.2d 261 (6th Cir. 1969), or is based on proceedings in which there is an apparent conflict of interest between the employee and the union representing him (Kansas City Meat Packers, Div. of Aristo Foods, 198 NLRB No. 2 (1972)).
The Board’s award of back pay to Bond is proper under NLRB v. Hod Carriers, Local 300, supra, wherein an award of back pay was affirmed as reasonably designed to implement the policies of the Act.
The order of the Board will be enforced.
. Pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement between the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association, an employers’ association, Joint Port Labor Relations Committees, comprised of an equal number of local union and employer members, are established in each West Coast port in order to exercise control over the registered list of that port.

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

Choices:

Answer: 1