Kansas county agrees to pay $3 million over police raid on a small-town newspaper, editor says

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A rural Kansas county has agreed to pay a little more than $3 million and apologize over a law enforcement raid on a small-town weekly newspaper in August 2023 that sparked an outcry over press freedom, the paper’s editor said Tuesday.

Marion County was among multiple defendants in five federal lawsuits filed by the company that publishes the Marion County Record, its publisher, the estate of his late mother Joan Meyer, the paper’s co-owner, employees of the paper and a former Marion City Council member whose home also was raided.

Eric Meyer, the paper’s editor and publisher, told The Associated Press he is hoping the size of the payment is large enough to discourage similar actions against news organizations in the future.

“The goal isn’t to get the money. The money is symbolic,” Meyer said. “The press has basically been under assault.”

Jeffrey Kuhlman, an attorney representing the county commission, the sheriff and his former deputy, didn’t immediately respond to a phone message from The Associated Press seeking comment.

The raid triggered a national debate about press freedom focused on Marion, a town of about 1,900 people set among rolling prairie hills some 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of Kansas City, Missouri. Also, Meyer’s mother, who co-owned the newspaper and lived with him, died the day after the raid of a heart attack, which he blamed on the stress of the raid.

A search warrant tied the raid — which was led by Marion’s police chief — to a dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner who had accused the Marion County Record of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record. Meyer has said believed the newspaper’s aggressive coverage of local politics and issues played a role and that his newsroom had been examining the police chief’s past work history.