Newspaper owner sues small Kansas city, police department for raiding his home and office: 'Illegal as hell'

The owner of a small newspaper in Marion, Kansas, a city of fewer than 2,000 residents, is suing his city and local police department, among other defendants, after officers conducted a raid on his home and newspaper office last summer.

On Monday, Eric Meyer, owner of the Marion County Record, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Kansas, claiming that various public figures, in their official and personal capacities, violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights when they searched his home and office in August 2023. During those raids, investigators apparently seized computers, servers, hard drives, and even personal cell phones belonging to reporters, as Blaze News previously reported.

The raids on Meyer's home and office related to Kari Newell, a prominent Marion businesswoman who was seeking a liquor license for her restaurant. However, Meyer had received a tip that Newell had been illegally driving on a suspended license after a previous DUI conviction, information that likely would have put Newell's liquor license request in jeopardy.

Though Meyer's paper, the Marion County Record, never ran a story about Newell's past, Meyer did contact then-Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody and Marion County Sheriff Jeff Soyez to say that he would investigate whether local law enforcement had knowingly permitted Newell to drive on a suspended license.

Newell, who had also recently asked Meyer and another Record reporter to leave her coffee shop during an event for a Republican congressman, later accused Meyer of obtaining her private information in an "illegal" manner.

Within a matter of days, all five members of the Marion Police Department and two Marion County sheriff's deputies conducted the raids on Meyer's home and the Marion County Record office. The predicates for the search warrant were reportedly "identity theft of Kari Newell" and "unlawful acts concerning computers."

In the lawsuit, Meyer alleged that the raids were conducted in retaliation for unfavorable coverage of former Marion Mayor David Mayfield and former Chief Cody, who resigned from his position after footage from the raid allegedly showed him rifling through reporters' files about his previous work with the police department in Kansas City, Missouri.

Meyer has always claimed that the information regarding Newell's past was discovered legally since driving records are public. Yet, according to the lawsuit, Cody misrepresented the law regarding such information in the search warrant authorizing the raid.

Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, who signed the search warrant, then almost immediately nullified it when she crossed out the line for a notary's signature, claiming that Chief Cody had sworn to the veracity of its contents "before me," even though Cody had not actually done so, the lawsuit said.

Meyer stated he also intends to add a wrongful death claim to the lawsuit in connection with his late mother, Joan Meyer. Joan Meyer co-owned the Record with her son and was present in his home at the time of the raids last August. "I’m not dumb," she told the officers that day, the lawsuit stated. "I may be ninety-some years old, but I know what’s going on. And what’s going on is illegal as hell."

She even predicted that the raids would kill her, warning the officers, "That’s going to be murder." Within 24 hours of the raids, Joan Meyer died of an apparent heart attack. She was 98.

The lawsuit does not list the financial damages sought for the raids, but Meyer did indicate that he will seek $5 million in the wrongful death claim.

"The last thing we want is to bankrupt the city or county, but we have a duty to democracy and to countless news organizations and citizens nationwide to challenge such malicious and wanton violations of the First and Fourth Amendments and federal laws limiting newsroom searches," Eric Meyer said.

Meyer also indicated he would donate "any punitive damages to community projects and causes supporting cherished traditions of freedom."

The lawsuit names many defendants: the City of Marion, former Mayor Mayfield, former Chief Cody, acting Marion Chief Zach Hudlin, Sheriff Soyez, the Marion County Board of Commissioners, and Detective Aaron Christner. Blaze News reached out to current Marion Mayor Michael Powers, Chief Hudlin, Sheriff Soyez, and David Mueller, the chair of the Marion County Board of Commissioners, for comment. We did not receive any responses.

Days after the raid last year, however, the Marion PD claimed in a Facebook post written in the first person that the officers' actions would ultimately be "vindicated."

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