A Kansas county has agreed to publicly apologize and pay out $3 million for authorizing a raid on the Marion County Record, a local newspaper, in August of 2023.
“They intentionally wanted to harass us for reporting the news, and you’re not supposed to do that in a democracy,” Eric Meyer, the editor and publisher of the Marion County Record, said after the payout was approved earlier this week, according to the Associated Press.
The original search warrants that were used to justify the raid were based on the accusation that the Record and one of its reporters had illegally impersonated a local restaurant owner so as to obtain the owner’s driving record online.
The warrants also accused now-former city council member Ruth Herbel of later sending a cellphone screenshot of the driving record to the city’s manager.
Days after the Record allegedly did this, “police obtained search warrants accusing the newsroom of identity theft and computer crimes, seizing computers, phones, and reporting materials from both the paper’s office and the home of its publisher,” according to Fox News.
Not only was Meyer’s home raided, so was Herbel’s home.
GESTAPO—Why was this 98 year old woman’s house raided by the Marion Police Department in Kansas?
I’ll gladly tell you why. Walk with me.
This is 98 year old Joan Meyer. She’s the co-owner of a newspaper in Kansas called The Marion County Record.
(She died the very next day… pic.twitter.com/biemFHKg7z
— Amiri King (@AmiriKing) August 23, 2023
Meyer’s 98-year-old mother and Record co-owner, Joan, died of a heart attack the day after the raid. He blames the stress of the raid for her death.
After the raid, all hell broke loose.
“Three days after the raid, the local prosecutor said there wasn’t enough evidence to justify it,” the AP notes
It gets worse: According to the AP, “[e]xperts said Marion’s police chief at the time, Gideon Cody, was on legally shaky ground when he ordered it, and a former top federal prosecutor for Kansas suggested it might have been a criminal violation of civil rights.”
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office has since apologized for participating in the raid.
“The Sheriff’s Office wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record,” the office said in a statement.
“This likely would not have happened if established law had been reviewed and applied prior to the execution of the warrants,” the statement continued.
Under the agreement reached this week, the county will pay $1 million to the estate of Meyer’s mayor, $1.1 million to be split between two former Record reporters and the newspaper’s business manager, and $650,000 to Herbel.
But Meyer has claimed he isn’t concerned about the money but about press freedom.
“The goal isn’t to get the money. The money is symbolic. The press has basically been under assault,” he said.
The AP notes that after the raid in 2023, “a national debate about press freedom” erupted.
#Kansas “An agreement from Marion County, Kansas officials to pay $3 million to those directly affected by local law enforcement’s 2023 raid on the Marion County Record and expression of regret for the raid is an important win for press freedom amid a growing trend of hostility… pic.twitter.com/lwzuxe60Yl
— CPJ Américas (@CPJAmericas) November 11, 2025
Doug Anstaett, a retired Kansas Press Association executive director, believes the raid was prompted by the police purposefully trying to “get at” Meyer because of his adversarial relationship with them and others.
“It totally backfired,” he said to the AP. “They didn’t follow any [legal] requirements, and therefore it was really a slam dunk in terms of whether they broke the law or not.”
Genelle Belmas, a University of Kansas professor who teaches media law, told the AP that the raid was “an egregious violation of the First Amendment rights” of the paper and its publisher, Meyer.
“I share his hope that an award of this size serves as a deterrent against future ill-conceived warrants with political motivations,” she said. “And no amount of money brings Joan Meyer back. We need to stay vigilant against government incursions on the press.”
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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