Kansas county apologizes, agrees to pay $3 million over small-town newspaper raid

Matthew Kelly, The Kansas City Star on Nov 11, 2025

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The August 2023 raid on a small-town Kansas newspaper and its owner’s home drew national headlines and was roundly criticized as an attack on press freedom.

Now, rural Marion County is paying for the role it played in signing off on the raids, which followed a local restaurateur’s complaints about journalists investigating her.

On Monday, the Marion County Board of Commissioners agreed to more than $3 million in combined payouts to three journalists and a former city councilor whose home was also raided.

Eric Meyer, the owner and editor of the Marion County Record, said the paper’s lawsuits against the city of Marion and former Police Chief Gideon Cody are ongoing.

Cody, a former Kansas City police captain hired in Marion in 2023, pleaded not guilty last month to illegally ordering a witness to delete text messages between them in the weeks surrounding the raid.

But Meyer and the other plaintiffs decided their legal disputes with Marion County could be resolved without a jury trial.

“We were willing to short-circuit it because of two things — because there was an admission of wrongdoing … and the apology, and that they would also agree not to a settlement, but to a stipulated judgment that they will be judged just as if they had gone to trial,” Meyer said in a phone interview Tuesday.

“So there’s no nondisclosure agreements. There’s no denial of wrongdoing. There’s none of that,” Meyer said. “They basically admit that what we allege that they did, they did.”

After the judgment was finalized, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office issued a public apology.

“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 statement reads.

“This likely would not have happened if established law had been reviewed and applied prior to the execution of the warrants,” the statement concluded.

Jeffrey Kuhlman, an attorney representing the county, did not return a phone call Tuesday afternoon.

‘A price to pay’

Joan Meyer, Eric Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, was deeply disturbed by the raid on their shared home and the Record, where she worked for many decades. In a phone interview with The Wichita Eagle the next day, she described the law enforcement actions as “Hitler tactics.” Half a day later, she died.

“It might make her rest easier to know that somebody admitted that they shouldn’t have done what they were doing,” Meyer said of his mother.

The judgment releases the county from four separate federal lawsuits filed by various plaintiffs against officials.

According to the terms of the agreement approved by county commissioners, the Record will receive $300,000 and Meyer will receive $200,000. Joan Meyer’s estate will receive $1 million. Former City Councilmember Ruth Herbel and former Record journalist Phyllis Zorn are in line to receive $650,000 apiece, and another former Record journalist, Deb Gruver, will get $250,000.

“Money wasn’t the issue. But money’s the symbol,” Meyer said of the payouts. “It’s a symbol that says if you want to bully people — particularly the free press — if you want to bully them, there’s a price to pay. And that price is going to be in the millions.”

Meyer said it’s highly unlikely that he and the other plaintiffs would consider a settlement outside of the court in its cases against former city officials.

“One of the things that makes us want to go to trial has been that the city, even after all the people who were involved in it are gone, has been trying to throw up roadblocks to everything that we’ve been doing,” Meyer said. “If they had done otherwise, we might not be so insistent on going all the way to a verdict.”

Once all the legal disputes have been resolved, Meyer said he hopes there will be enough money to establish an endowment fund that can secure the Record’s long-term future as a watchdog in Marion County.

“It may actually accomplish the exact reverse of what they tried to do when they wanted to intimidate us,” Meyer said. “They wanted to put us out of business. Well, they may have guaranteed that we stay in business.”

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