The Maine Bureau of Liquor Enforcement had blocked a beer importer from selling the brew, along with two beers with labels depicting bare-breasted women. Those decisions were reversed after the state attorney general’s office determined that the company probably would win the lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed on its behalf last month.
State officials had barred the English-made Santa’s Butt out of concern its label might appeal to children. It depicts a rear view of a beer-drinking Santa sitting on a “butt,” a large barrel brewers once used to store beer.
The other previously banned beers feature paintings of bare-breasted women on their labels. One of the paintings hangs in the Louvre – Eugene Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” – and the other was commissioned by the importer, Belchertown, Mass.-based Shelton Brothers.
