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 "natural persons". 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:
Charlotte COATS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Stephen WOODS; Orange County Superior Court; Jack Mandel; James Cook; Commissioner Evans; Commissioner Fassell; County of Orange; Thomas H. Schulte; Jane M. Egley; United Fathers; Henry J. Kohler; William C. Armstrong; Gail Armstrong; Costa Mesa Police Department, Newport-Mesa School District, Defendants-Appellees. Charlotte COATS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Stephen WOODS, Orange County Superior Court; Jack Mandel; James Cook; Commissioner Fassell; County of Orange; Thomas H. Schulte; Jane M. Egley; United Fathers; Henry J. Kohler; William C. Armstrong; Gail Armstrong; Costa Mesa Police Department; Newport-Mesa School District, Defendants-Appellees.
Nos. 86-5712, 86-6046.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Argued and Submitted May 4, 1987.
Decided June 5, 1987.
Charlotte Coats, Santa Ana, Cal., plaintiff-appellant.
David N. Kauth, Santa Ana, Cal., Kevin M. Tripi, Costa Mesa, Cal., Jeanne E. Em-rich, Irvine, Cal., Bruce Führer, Los Ange-les, Cal., Brandt Caudill, Irvine, Cal., C. William Nyman, L. Thomas Krahelski, Santa Ana, Cal., for defendants-appellees.
Before PREGERSON, NELSON, and WIGGINS, Circuit Judges.
PREGERSON, Circuit Judge:
Charlotte Coats brought these actions, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, in which she alleged that her husband and others wrongfully deprived her of the custody of her two children. The district court abstained from hearing the cases on the ground that the actions, involving child custody, implicated domestic relations issues, traditionally an area of state concern. Coats appeals from the district court’s dismissal of the actions. We affirm.
Following divorce from her husband, William Armstrong, Coats obtained sole custody of their two sons from 1971 until 1983. In 1983, Armstrong commenced custody proceedings in state court. There he gained visitation rights, then joint custody, and, finally, sole custody of the children. Coats appealed the decision awarding sole custody to Armstrong to the California Supreme Court, but was denied review. Coats now has two cases pending in state court, one involving the constitutional issues raised in this action, and another focusing on state law custody matters.
Defendants in the two similar federal court actions that form the basis for these appeals include Armstrong, his present wife, their attorney, the court-appointed attorney for the two children, a court-appointed psychologist, two court commissioners, two Superior Court judges, the Orange County Superior Court, the County of Orange Costa Mesa Police Department, the Newport-Mesa School District, and an organization called United Fathers. In her complaint, Coats alleges that these defendants wrongfully deprived her of child custody (thus depriving her of a liberty interest) in violation of 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985(2), and 1985(3).
Coats filed her first federal district court action on November 22, 1985. The district court dismissed the action on February 5, 1986, based on the doctrine of equitable abstention. Coats filed her second action in district court on February 19, 1986. In her latest complaint, she added four defendants, dropped one defendant, and made additional factual allegations. This action was dismissed on May 30, 1986, on the same legal basis as the initial action. Coats timely appeals from both dismissals, and this court has consolidated Coats’ appeals for decision.
We review a district court’s abstention decision for abuse of discretion. Peterson v. Babbitt, 708 F.2d 465, 466 (9th Cir.1983) (per curiam).
We hold that the district court’s decision to abstain was not an abuse of discretion. The district court, in dismissing the action, relied on the abstention doctrine under which federal courts traditionally decline to exercise jurisdiction in domestic relations cases when the core issue involves the status of parent and child or husband and wife. The district court’s application of the abstention doctrine was appropriate under Peterson, 708 F.2d at 465. In that case, a prisoner brought a section 1983 action alleging that various defendants wrongfully deprived him of visitation rights with his children. We affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the case on the ground that plaintiff had pending state actions in which he could bring his constitutional claims and that the case itself raised issues of traditional state concern. We stated that
[t]he strong state interest in domestic relations matters, the superior competence of state courts in settling family disputes because regulation and supervision of domestic relations within their borders is entrusted to the states, and the possibility of incompatible federal and state court decrees in cases of continuing judicial supervision by the state makes federal abstention in these cases appropriate.
Peterson, 708 F.2d at 466.
This case, while raising constitutional issues, is at its core a child custody dispute. The state courts have already considered the merits of Coats’ claims and have held that her former husband is entitled to custody. The district court was aptly reluctant to put itself in the position of having to review the state courts’ custody decision. If the constitutional claims in the case have independent merit, the state courts are competent to hear them. Given the state courts’ strong interest in domestic relations, we do not consider that the district court abused its discretion when it invoked the doctrine of abstention.
AFFIRMED.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 1