Civil rights lawyers have made a request to an 87-year-old federal judge: Stand firm and defend the S-word, the B-word and the F-bomb.

Attorneys for Boyd Randall Green, whom the Whitfield County Sheriff's Office arrested last June for using vulgar language on a 911 call, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court. They say the sheriff's office violated Green's First, Fourth and 14th Amendment rights.

The lawyers with the Southern Center for Human Rights asked Judge Harold L. Murphy, who's been seated on the bench in the Northern District of Georgia since the Jimmy Carter administration, to ban the sheriff's office from ever making such an arrest again. They have also asked for a jury trial -- and money.

The sheriff's office arrested Green after he called 911 around 3 a.m. on June 2, 2014. He asked to see a specific police officer. The dispatcher told Green that officer was off duty.

He criticized the officer, saying his actions the year before caused the death of Green's mother. At two points in the conversation, Green cursed. He said "a******." He also said "b*******."

"He had a right to do that, under the First Amendment," said his attorney, Sarah Geraghty. "Arresting him and jailing him for making a peaceable complaint on the telephone, that violated his rights."

Whitfield County Attorney Robert Smalley said the deputy who arrested Green that night acted reasonably. Law enforcement is a tough job, a heated job, he said. It's hard to say how people would act in that situation.

The origins of Green's case stretch back a year before he called 911. In June 2013, Green crashed his car. Believing Green to be drunk, Dalton Police Officer Diner Mondragon arrested him for driving under the influence.

Green, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran diagnosed with depression, said he told Mondragon that somebody needed to check on his 83-year-old mother, Ada. A stroke left her barely able to move, and Green was her caregiver. She needed help with her medication, food and diapers.

Boyd Green, 58, sits on the front steps at his home in Rocky Face, Ga. Green is a disabled United States Marine disturbed by Whitfield County police after several recent encounters.

He said Mondragon ignored him, though the police department says they have no video corresponding to the arrest. In jail, Green said, he told other sheriff's office employees that his mother needed somebody to help her.

Green could not make bond. Unaware that Green was behind bars, a friend stopped by his house five days after the arrest. He found Ada Green on the floor, dead.

A year later, Green drank vodka and called 911. His voice stayed calm. After the call, 911 records show, an unnamed member of the sheriff's office asked the dispatcher if Green was belligerent.

"Was he using a bunch of profanity?"

"He didn't use a whole lot, no," the dispatcher said.

Green's attorneys say the sheriff's office didn't have probable cause to make the arrest. The dispatcher never told him he was speaking loudly or that he was breaking any laws.

Smalley said the sheriff's office merely upheld the law.

"If the court determines that the law itself is invalid on its face, then that is something that a federal court can do," he said. "But the sheriff's office is confident that it followed what it believed the law to be in good faith."

The man who made the law said Tuesday that it was not designed for a case like Green's.

Using vulgar language on a 911 call became illegal in Georgia as part of a much broader bill dealing with separate issues. John Lunsford, a former state representative and the bill's sponsor, was actually focused on phone companies like AT&T.

Years earlier, the federal government passed a law allowing these companies to charge a customer $1.50 for every time they called 911. Lunsford said this money was supposed to go to emergency call centers to supplement their operations.

But companies pocketed the money instead, Lunsford said. So he introduced this law, demanding companies cough up that $1.50.

While writing the bill, Henry County E-911 and emergency management director Don Ash approached the legislators with an audio tape. When he pushed play, the lawmakers heard a slew of callers harassing his dispatchers.

Like a shock jock DJ, Ash said, the callers had no boundaries. They made fun of dispatchers' ethnicities. They made sexual advances. They howled curse words incoherently.

He wanted a law that would target "frequent callers," people with little to do but bother dispatchers. People who could cause a problem, should too many dispatchers get tied up on nonsense calls during an emergency.

When he sponsored the bill, Lunsford did not consider that someone with a mental illness could go to jail.

"I don't think that was ever the legislative intent," he said. "You've got the letter of the law and you've got the intent of the law. They never match."

Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at tjett@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6476.

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