Story highlights Parents, CNN have filed suits over investigation in Lowndes County, Georgia

Local judges say their relationships with officials mean they can't be impartial

Valdosta, Georgia (CNN) In a rare order Thursday, all seven judges in Georgia's Southern Judicial Circuit have recused themselves from the lawsuit filed by the parents of Kendrick Johnson against the Lowndes County Sheriff's Office and a second action, filed by CNN against Lowndes County Schools.

The recusals come less than a week before the two-year anniversary of the discovery of Johnson's body in the center of a rolled gym mat in the old gym at Lowndes High School on January 11, 2013.

Johnson's parents, Kenneth and Jacquelyn Johnson, said they never believed investigators' conclusion that their 17-year-old son died while struggling to reach for a shoe at the center of the mat. They believe their son was murdered.

Months after an autopsy conducted by the state medical examiner supported the local investigators' conclusion, Johnson's parents hired a pathologist, who said he found evidence of unexplained, nonaccidental blunt force trauma to Johnson's neck.

In June 2013, attorneys representing Kenneth and Jacquelyn Johnson sued the Lowndes County Sheriff's Office to get access to the department's full investigative file and a copy of school surveillance video recorded around the time Johnson disappeared. According to the lawsuit, the department's refusal to release the file was a violation of Georgia's Open Records Law.

Read More