RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- Two growing craft breweries are suing after failing to get North Carolina legislators to overturn a decades-old law on beer sales.

Lawyers for Olde Mecklenburg Brewery and Noda Brewing Co. were in court Tuesday to challenge the law, which forces them to hand over to private companies the distribution of their own beer once they sell 25,000 barrels or about the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool in a year.

The Charlotte breweries say the state's beer distribution law is unconstitutional. They argue they're forced to give up control to politically influential middlemen where their products are sold for virtually as long as they stay in business.

A state attorney says a three-judge panel should examine the beer distribution law overall, not just how it applies to those two breweries.