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Officers are supposed to raid homes and seize property only when they need to protect public safety. But the police in Marion, Kansas, had a different motive when they showed up on Ruth Herbel’s doorstep with a search warrant.
Herbel, an 81-year-old retiree, got elected to City Council in the small community north of Wichita, Kansas. She became vice mayor and used her position to challenge the mayor, whom she saw as corrupt.
The mayor responded by trying to remove Herbel from office. Initial attempts included an unsuccessful recall campaign and a scheme to trick Herbel into agreeing she was an at-will employee. Finally, the mayor decided that the only way to get rid of his political opponent was to sic the police on her.
The problem was, Herbel had done nothing wrong—so the mayor had to make something up.
His chance came in 2023, when Herbel and local journalists at the Marion County Record saw on Facebook that a restaurant owner close to the mayor had a DUI conviction. When Herbel warned her colleagues that the conviction could jeopardize the restaurant owner’s liquor license, the mayor and his allies lied and claimed that Herbel and the journalists had stolen the woman’s identity and improperly accessed her driving record.
The allegation was bogus. But the mayor had the police chief “investigate” anyway. Days later, the chief and sheriff’s office had a search warrant ready for Herbel’s home and the newsroom. County officials then shopped for a judge who would sign the warrant, and they found one who presides nearly an hour outside the county.
Raids soon followed. Officers stormed the newsroom, where journalists were investigating the police chief. Officers also raided the home of the 98-year-old co-owner of the newspaper, who died of a stress-induced heart attack the next day.
When officers came to Herbel’s home, they read her Miranda rights, interrogated her, and seized her computer and only phone. The intrusion terrified her husband, who suffers from dementia. It also left Herbel without a phone to call for help.
For all the damage the police caused, they uncovered no evidence of wrongdoing. Yet they went back to the station and drew up an arrest warrant anyway.
The strong-arm tactics backfired after the raids became national news. The mayor didn’t run for reelection, the chief resigned, other officers left the force, and the victims fought back in court. Herbel filed her own lawsuit on May 28, 2024.
“In my wildest dreams, I never thought something like this could happen to me,” Herbel says.
Sylvia Gonzalez knows this sort of shock. Her political opponents jailed her for fabricated reasons in Castle Hills, Texas, after she ran for City Council and got elected on a reform platform.
Compared with Herbel, Gonzalez was young—just 72 at the time. But the trauma of spending a day behind bars was intense. So, Gonzalez sued the mayor, the police chief, and a private attorney who targeted her after the criminal case fizzled in 2019.
Just getting to trial has been difficult. But last month, the Supreme Court held in Gonzalez v. Trevino that probable cause for a pretextual crime is not enough to justify a retaliatory arrest. The victory allows Gonzalez to continue her fight in court.
She and Herbel are not alone. Our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, represents them and other victims of First Amendment retaliation. We have learned from sad experience that mayors, police chiefs, city managers, and other officials routinely punish speech they do not like.
A SWAT team tackled and arrested Waylon Bailey after he made a joke about the police on Facebook in Rapides Parish, Louisiana. Officers fined William Fambrough and towed his van after he campaigned for the mayor’s opponent in East Cleveland, Ohio.
Deputies kicked citizen journalist Justin Pulliam out of a press conference, then arrested him for filming a police encounter with a mentally ill man in Fort Bend County, Texas. And officers arrested Noah Petersen—twice—for peaceably criticizing the mayor during public meetings in Newton, Iowa.
All these cases involve First Amendment retaliation. And all involve law-enforcement abuse.
The weaponization of police power must stop. People have a right to criticize the government without fear of fines, fees, and incarceration. Hopefully, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Gonzalez will make these sorts of cases fewer and farther between.