How to restrict authors to certain categories?

Hi, I recently created a multi-author blog called Express Bloggers. I am pretty satisfied with WordPress’ default system of featuring posts (post sticky). But most premium themes don’t support this. They set up a system of featuring posts in front page that allows fetching posts from certain categories.

The problem is, if I create that category, authors may publish their posts under that category for their post to be featured in the front page. I’ve come across Role Scoper plugin which has the option to restrict certain categories to certain user-level. However, I find that plugin overall is complicated. I’m looking for an alternative plugin that will let me restrict one or more category from all authors so that they don’t see it when selecting categories in their post editor panel.

Please help. Thanks in advance.
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