Home > Liberty Justice Center Takes On Kentucky Official In Free Speech Fight Over Whistleblower Censorship
Tampa Free Press
(Tampa Free Press)—The Liberty Justice Center (LJC) launched a federal lawsuit today against Simpson County Judge Executive Mason Barnes, accusing him of trampling the First Amendment rights of a Kentucky whistleblower who exposed ethics violations in local government.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, Bowling Green Division, the case—Peyton v. Barnes—centers on Joel Peyton, a Simpson County resident whose online criticism was silenced after he uncovered corruption tied to Barnes and the county’s Industrial Authority.
The saga began in 2023 when Peyton, alarmed by a plan to buy farmland near his home for a warehouse project, teamed up with neighbors to dig into the deal.
Through open records requests, they unearthed personal credit card misuse by the Industrial Authority’s director—revelations that forced the director’s resignation and scuttled the purchase. But Peyton didn’t stop there. He found that Barnes, a member of the Industrial Authority, had a hidden stake in another land deal: his construction company was tapped to build a house on a parcel sold by the Authority, with work starting before rezoning was finalized.
Barnes neither disclosed the conflict nor recused himself from the zoning vote.
Peyton filed an ethics complaint in June 2024. In January 2025, the Simpson County Ethics Board ruled Barnes had...
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