Small-town newspapers are vanishing from the American landscape, crushed by economic pressures from online media and corporate consolidation. In some cases, governments have piled on, seeking to sink or undermine the papers that remain. Those papers should be able to rely on courts to protect them from government abuses. Too often, however, courts fail to do their job.

Marion, Kan., provides a vivid, troubling example. On Aug. 11, the police in that central Kansas town of 2,000 brazenly raided the office of the weekly Marion County Record and the home of its publisher. Officers seized reporters’ computers, phones and other materials.

The Marion police said the raid was necessary to an ongoing investigation. That inquiry reportedly concerned a local restaurant owner’s claim that the Record, while reporting about her application for a liquor license, had broken the law to obtain information about her past drunk-driving offense. Magistrate Judge Laura Viar’s sweeping warrant cited “identity theft” and “unlawful acts concerning computers” as grounds for the raid.

The Record’s publisher, Eric Meyer, told NPR that the paper had also been digging into allegations of past misconduct by Marion’s police chief, Gideon Cody, who took office on June 1 after retiring from the Kansas City Police Department. Mr. Meyer says Mr. Cody had threatened to sue the paper.