VR : 48

[Guest79]

Wisconsin, Illinois, Florida, and Minnesota have begun to enforce statewide bans prohibiting landfills to accept leaves, brush, and grass clippings.

(A) Same
(B) prohibiting that landfills accept leaves, brush, and grass clippings
(C) prohibiting landfills from accepting leaves, brush, and grass clippings
(D) that leaves, brush, and grass clippings cannot be accepted in landfills
(E) that landfills cannot accept leaves, brush, and grass clippings

Can someone shed some light?

[RonPurewal]

To use the word 'ban' correctly, you have to say that the ban prevents (or prohibits, or proscribes, or criminalizes, or one of the many other words carrying the meaning of 'puts off limits') something. You can't say 'a ban that X does Y'. So that does it for the last two choices.

As an alternative construction - possibly the most common construction, actually - you can say a ban ON (NOUN). This construction could theoretically be used here, but (1) it isn't, and (2) it would be difficult to introduce it into this particular sentence without some seriously awkward phrasing.

A and B are done in by poor idiomatic usage. As far as A, you can't say 'X is prohibited TO (verb)', although you can say the related 'It is prohibited to (verb)'. You have to say that X is prohibited FROM (verb)ing'. And B should look really, really wrong to just about any native writer/speaker of English.

That leaves C.