Three years after the chief judge of Georgia’s Appalachian Judicial Circuit helped orchestrate the indictment of a local newspaper publisher and his attorney, a federal judge in Atlanta has thrown out a civil rights case accusing the judge of retaliatory prosecution.

Mark Thomason, publisher of now defunct Fannin Focus, and his lawyer, Hiawassee attorney Russell Stookey, filed the suit against Chief Superior Court Judge Brenda Weaver in 2018—two years after they were arrested on felony charges stemming from a separate public records fight. The court battle stemmed from Thomason’s attempts to obtain a copy of an official recording of a local court hearing and, with Stookey’s help, subpoena bank records of Weaver’s county judicial operating account.