Retaliatory Raid Leads To IJ Lawsuit

Ruth Herbel was vice mayor of Marion, Kansas, when police searched her home and confiscated her computer and only phone. Now, Ruth and Sylvia Gonzalez share the same nightmare: They were both targeted for their political opposition to the mayor and his allies. 

After she retired from a career in state and federal government, Ruth ran for office to make her local government more honest and transparent. She quickly learned, however, that not everyone in government shared her preference for honesty and transparency. Mayor David Mayfield, in particular, resisted Ruth’s insistence that he follow the rules—so he tried to silence her. He started small, restricting what issues Ruth could raise at public meetings and threatening criminal charges if she spoke about city business without the City Council’s approval. 

When Ruth successfully campaigned against a public referendum to expand the mayor’s powers, Mayfield decided Ruth had to go. He and his wife filed a petition to recall Ruth from office. And when that effort failed, he decided that the only way to remove Ruth was to have her arrested. 

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It didn’t take long for Mayfield to put his plan into action. By chance, Ruth and the Marion County Record—a local newspaper that was also critical of the mayor’s administration—had each previously received a copy of a letter from a state agency revealing that a restaurant owner close to the mayor had a DUI conviction, which could have prevented her from getting a liquor license. There was nothing illegal about having the letter; it was publicly available. But the mayor still used the letter as pretext to orchestrate a ham-handed investigation into his political opponents. 

The mayor and his police chief contrived a theory that possessing a copy of an official document that contains someone’s personally identifiable information (e.g., their address or driver’s license number) was, somehow, identity theft. Within two days, they’d drawn up warrants to search Ruth’s home, along with the newspaper’s office and the home of one of its publishers, and to seize their electronic devices. 

Although the warrant said police could seize only those devices that contained evidence of identity theft, they took every cell phone and computer they found. Ruth begged them to at least let her get her children’s and doctors’ phone numbers; her husband, Ronald, suffered from dementia and several other ailments, and Ruth’s phone was their only way to call for help in an emergency. Unsurprisingly, watching the police raid his house and interrogate his wife sent Ronald into a spiral of confusion and anxiety. Still, the police wouldn’t let Ruth get the numbers she needed.

Relatively speaking, Ruth was lucky. The paper’s 98-year-old co-owner died from a stress-induced heart attack the morning after the raids. The national outcry and lawsuits that followed forced Marion to reverse course: It withdrew the warrants, and the police chief resigned.

But Ruth still wants accountability. So she teamed up with IJ to vindicate her First Amendment rights. And after Sylvia’s high court victory, local politicians and bureaucrats are finally getting the message: In America, we don’t arrest our political opponents. If you do, you’d better be prepared to defend yourself in court.

Jared McClain is an IJ attorney.