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 "private business and its executives". 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:
UNITED ASSOCIATION OF JOURNEYMEN AND APPRENTICES OF the PLUMBING AND PIPEFITTING INDUSTRY OF the UNITED STATES AND CANADA, LOCAL 32, AFL-CIO, Petitioner, v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Respondent. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. UNITED ASSOCIATION OF JOURNEYMEN AND APPRENTICES OF the PLUMBING AND PIPEFITTING INDUSTRY OF the UNITED STATES AND CANADA, LOCAL 32, AFL-CIO, Respondent.
Nos. 89-70289, 89-70336.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Argued and Submitted July 13, 1990.
Decided Aug. 30, 1990.
Hugh Hafer, Hafer, Price, Rinehart & Schwerin, Seattle, Washington, for petitioner/respondent.
Judith A. Dowd, Supervisory Atty., Joseph J. Jablonski, Jr., Atty., N.L.R.B., Washington, D.C., for respondent/petitioner.
Before HUG, NELSON and BRUNETTI, Circuit Judges.
HUG, Circuit Judge:
I.
The United States Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada, Local 32, AFL-CIO (“the Union”), petitions for review of a National Labor Relations Board (“the Board”) decision that the Union violated the National Labor Relations Act’s (“the Act”) secondary boycott provisions. 29 U.S.C. § 158(b)(4)(ii)(B), Section 8 of NLRA (1988). The Board cross-appeals for enforcement of its order. We grant the Union’s petition for review, deny enforcement of the Board’s order, and remand for further proceedings.
II.
In 1987, Ramada, Inc., the charging party in this petition, was building a hotel in the State of Washington. After soliciting bids, Ramada chose Baugh Construction Company as the general contractor for the job. Baugh Construction, in turn, subcontracted part of the job to Chapman Mechanical, Inc. Chapman Mechanical was a nonunion plumbing and mechanical firm.
In response to the selection of Chapman Mechanical as a subcontractor, Floyd Sexton, local business manager for the Union, sent a letter to the president and chief operating officer of Ramada, with copies to the officials of Baugh Construction. That letter is the subject of this action. It read as follows:
It is my understanding that Baugh Construction Company, your general contractor for the Sea-Tac Airport Ramada Inn scheduled to begin soon in Seattle, Washington, will be subcontracting the plumbing work to Chapman Plumbing Company from Tacoma, Washington.
This is to advise you that Chapman Plumbing is a nonunion contractor. The wages paid by Chapman to his nonunion workers constitute a serious threat to the standard of living enjoyed by our members.
I will establish an aggressive and continuing picketing program for the job site and will do everything necessary to organize the Seattle building trades’ support for our picketing program. We will also ask all of our affiliate groups to join with us in not patronizing the Ramada Inns.
We will establish a handbilling program to notify prospective customers of problems with the Ramada Inn.
Chapman Plumbing has just started doing business in King County. This will be their first major job that we know about.
We would prefer to work with you and with Baugh Construction but so far all of our requests to meet with Baugh have been turned down. We will not sit by and let Chapman Plumbing steal work in King County with substandard rates and poor workmanship. It looks like the beginning of a full scale war with the Ramada Inn as the battlefield.
Upon receipt of this letter, Baugh Construction filed a charge with the Board alleging violation of the Act’s secondary boycott provisions. Based upon this letter alone, the Administrative Law Judge (“AU”) found that the Union violated the Act’s secondary boycott provisions by threatening to: (1) picket the jobsite; (2) ask affiliate groups not to patronize Ramada Inns; and (3) establish a handbilling program, to inform prospective customers of problems with Ramada.
The Board affirmed the AU and found “that the [Union’s] letter constituted an unlawful threat because it contained an unqualified threat to engage in secondary picketing.” However, the Board declined to pass on the AU’s findings concerning the Union’s threats to ask affiliate groups not to patronize Ramada and to establish a handbilling program, informing prospective customers of problems with Ramada.
As discussed in Section V, we do not reach the issues on which the Board declined to pass.
III.
We will uphold a Board decision if its findings are supported by substantial evidence and if the Board has properly applied the law. NLRB v. Howard Elec. Co., 873 F.2d 1287, 1290 (9th Cir.1989).
IV.
A union may lawfully picket a jobsite occupied by both primary and secondary employers. See Local 761, Int’l Union of Elec. Workers v. NLRB, 366 U.S. 667, 672-79, 81 S.Ct. 1285, 1288-93, 6 L.Ed.2d 592 (1961); Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, 92 NLRB 547 (1950) (Moore Dry Dock).
The AU viewed the letter as “an unqualified threat of prospective unlawful picketing.” The Board accepted and adopted the ALJ’s decision in this regard, with one qualification. The Board attempted to distinguish the present case from our decision in NLRB v. Ironworkers Local 433, 850 F.2d 551 (9th Cir.1988), decided one month after the AU’s decision.
In Ironworkers, the Board found a secondary boycott violation based upon a union’s unqualified threat to the secondary employer to picket the “job.” The Board concluded that the union violated the Act’s secondary boycott provisions because it threatened to picket a common situs without giving assurances that its picketing would be conducted lawfully. Id. at 556. We denied enforcement of the Board’s order and held that the Board could not presume that a union’s threat to picket the job was a threat to picket contrary to the law, when picketing at the job could be done in a lawful manner. We noted that such a presumption is without foundation in the Act, relevant case law or any general legal principles, and concluded that the Board’s holding was “irrational and beyond the Board’s authority.” Id. at 557.
The Board’s attempt to distinguish Ironworkers from the present case is unavailing. The Board maintains that in evaluating whether a union’s statements constitute an unlawful threat of secondary picketing under Ironworkers, “[t]he primary question is not whether particular words were used, or a disclaimer issued, but how, given the context of the [communication], the union’s statements should reasonably be understood.” Id. Under this contextual approach, the Board contends that the Union’s threat to picket the “jobsite” is reasonably understood as a threat to picket the entire Ramada jobsite unlawfully. Specifically, the Board references the absence of any testimony from the secondary employer (Ramada) that it understood that the threat to picket was directed to the primary employer (Chapman Mechanical). Such testimony was before the Board in Ironwork-ers. Id. We are not persuaded.
The Board in this case did not receive any evidence of what Ramada understood. The only evidence presented in support of a violation was the letter Sexton wrote to Ramada. The letter contained a threat to picket the “jobsite.” The Union could have lawfully picketed Chapman Mechanical, the primary employer, at the Ramada jobsite, as long as the picketing was primary in nature. See id. at 554. There is nothing in the letter that justifies a presumption that the Union would not honor a reserve gate system, which is normally established at a common situs. See, e.g., Huber and Antilla Constr. v. Carpenters Local 470, 659 F.2d 1013, 1017-18 (9th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 456 U.S. 977, 102 S.Ct. 2244, 72 L.Ed.2d 852 (1982). Although the picketing could turn out to be conducted in an unlawful manner, a presumption that this would take place is not justified from a threat to picket the jobsite.
In determining whether the Union demonstrated an impermissible secondary intent, the Board is required to view the totality of the circumstances. Constar, Inc. v. Plumbers Local 447, 748 F.2d 520, 522 (9th Cir.1984). Under Ironworkers, the Board cannot infer that the Union’s unqualified threat to picket the common situs would be unlawful. The Union’s reference to Ramada as the “battlefield” does not imply that the Union’s picketing of the Ramada jobsite would be unlawful. As the common situs in the Union’s dispute with Chapman Mechanical, the Ramada jobsite would, indeed, have been the prime location upon which the Union based its fight with Chapman Mechanical, the primary employer. In short, there is nothing in the letter which would permit a conclusion that the Union’s picketing would be unlawful.
Under Ironworkers, an unqualified threat to picket a jobsite alone does not constitute a violation of the Act’s secondary boycott provisions. Ironworkers, 850 F.2d at 557. Therefore, we decline to enforce the Board’s order.
v.
In addition to finding that the Union violated the Act’s secondary boycott provisions because the letter constituted an unqualified threat to picket unlawfully, the ALJ gave two additional reasons for finding the Union’s letter a violation of the Act’s secondary boycott provisions. First, the ALJ found that the Union’s threat to organize a union boycott of Ramada constituted a violation of the Act. Second, the AU found that the Union’s threat to establish a handbilling program also constituted a violation of the Act.
In its decision, the Board expressly declined to “pass on the judge’s findings concerning the threats to handbill and organize a boycott.” The Union nevertheless asks this court to review these additional reasons. We decline to do so.
It is the Board’s application of the law that we review, not the ALJ’s. Lippincott Indus., Inc. v. NLRB, 661 F.2d 112, 115 (9th Cir.1981); 29 U.S.C. § 160(e) and (f) (1988). While the ALJ’s decision is part of the record, our function is to determine whether the Board’s decision, not the ALJ’s, is supported by substantial evidence or based on an erroneous legal foundation. NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U.S. 105, 112, 76 S.Ct. 679, 684, 100 L.Ed. 975 (1956); Universal Camera Corp. v. NLRB, 340 U.S. 474, 492-96, 71 S.Ct. 456, 466-69, 95 L.Ed. 456 (1951). Accordingly, because the Board did not decide whether the Union’s threats to boycott and handbill violated the Act, we may not review these issues here. See South Prairie Constr. Co. v. Local No. 627, Int’l Union of Operating Eng’rs, 425 U.S. 800, 806, 96 S.Ct. 1842, 1845, 48 L.Ed.2d 382 (1976) (appellate court erred in deciding “unit” question not passed on by the Board).
We remand this case for a Board decision on the remainder of the ALJ’s findings.
VI.
The Union asks for attorneys’ fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act, 5 U.S.C. § 504, 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(A) (1988). This statute allows an award of attorneys’ fees to a prevailing party in an action against a Government agency, when the Government’s position was not substantially justified. Immigration and Naturalization Serv. v. Jean, — U.S. -, 110 S.Ct. 2316, 2317, 110 L.Ed.2d 134 (1990). The request is premature since the prevailing party in this controversy has yet to be established.
REVERSED and REMANDED.
. Section 8(b)(4)(ii)(B) of the NLRA, which pertains to the Act’s secondary boycott restrictions, provides in relevant part:
(b) It shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents—
(4) ... (ii) to threaten, coerce, or restrain any person engaged in commerce or in an industry affecting commerce, where in either case an object thereof is—
(B) forcing or requiring any person to cease ... doing business with any other person ... Provided, [tjhat nothing contained in this clause (B) shall be construed to make unlawful, where not otherwise lawful, any primary strike or primary picketing;
. Accordingly, we refrain from deciding the Union's First Amendment argument. See Figueroa v. Sunn, 884 F.2d 1290, 1292 (9th Cir.1989) (court refrains from deciding constitutional issue when there is a nonconstitutional basis for decision).

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "private business and its executives"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 1