They have not been ruled out by
Bell's Inequalities - yes, they and locality have been shown to be
mutually inconsitant, but locality itself is having difficulty standing up to close scrutiny.
In fact, all Bell's Theorum does in practice is replace 'hidden variables' with the equally magical 'quantum entanglement' - there is still a cause and effect, and we're still unable to see it. What's the difference (with respect to this discussion and the nature of randomness) between hidden variables and quantum entanglement?