The Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled a bar owner can be denied a liquor licence simply because he is a member of the Hells Angels.

On Monday, the court ordered the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario’s board to reconsider its decision not to revoke the liquor licence of Robert Barletta, 43, a full patch Hells Angel.

It overturned a Divisional Court ruling upholding the board’s refusal to lift Barletta’s liquor licence for his London, Ont., strip club, Famous Flesh Gordon’s, which he has run since 2001.

“Perhaps understandably, the board viewed this as a test case,” said Justice Stephen Goudge, writing for the three-judge appeal court panel.

Barletta was a founding member of the Hells Angels’ London chapter in 2003, and was its president at least until 2008, Goudge said.

The Hells Angels is a criminal organization under Canadian law, although being a member is not a crime, Goudge wrote.

In 2010, the commission’s registrar asked the board to strip Barletta of his licence, arguing his Hells Angels membership was, in itself, sufficient reason to believe he could not operate the bar legally and with integrity.

But the board allowed him to keep his licence, noting he has no criminal record and has run Flesh Gordon’s with no “hint of impropriety.”

The registrar appealed the board’s ruling to Divisional Court, which upheld it. The registrar appealed again to the court of appeal.

The appeal court backed the registrar, finding the board applied an erroneously high standard of proof — a “balance of probabilities” — to determine whether Barletta would operate the bar against the public interest.

Instead the board should have applied the much less onerous test — whether there are “reasonable grounds for belief,” Goudge wrote.

But Goudge did not agree with the registrar that membership in the Hells Angels should in itself automatically be grounds to revoke his licence.

He ordered the board to the hear matter again.

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The case will actually be reheard by the province’s Licence Appeal Tribunal, which took over the board’s adjudicative responsibilities in 2011.

Barletta was recently charged with committing a criminal offence for the benefit of a criminal organization and conspiracy to commit bookmaking in connection with the Platinum SportsBook Super Bowl party in Markham.