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Prison Bans D&D For Mimicking Gang Structure

Trepidity writes "In a case that has been winding its way through the courts for a while now, a Wisconsin prison banned inmates from playing Dungeons & Dragons, using the justification that 'one player is denoted the Dungeon Master... [who] is tasked with giving directions to other players... [which] mimics the organization of a gang.' The prison also cited some sparse evidence that a handful of non-inmate D&D players once committed some crimes that allegedly were related to their D&D playing. On Monday the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the regulation (PDF) against challenges from inmates. The court appeared skeptical of the ban, sarcastically referring to it as the 'war on D&D,' but upheld it nonetheless as having a 'rational basis.' Law professor Ilya Somin suggests that the court may have had no choice, given how deferential rational-basis review usually is."

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  1. In other news by symes · · Score: 0, Troll
    Monopoly banned for associations with bling, checkers banned due to confrontational game play, scrabble because it can be used to pass encrypted messages...

    99% of all murderers ate bread in the 12 months leading up to their crime, so lets ban bread while we are here. oh, and lets ban judges because they are clearly hangovers from a rather medieval system also associated with chopping peoples heads off.