Although same-sex marriage has been legal for more than a year in all 50 states, a Lafayette man is still fighting to receive his late husband's Social Security benefits.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday announced its intervention in the case of Gerald Allen "Jayson" Beem, 70, who's been denied the benefits since his husband's death a year-and-a-half ago.

"He's sort of stuck in an unjust kind of loophole," said Marjorie Esman, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana.

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Beem and his husband, 71-year-old Floyd Conley, married in California in late 2014. Conley died in February 2015, and about five months later, the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling forced all states to recognize same-sex marriages.

ACLU attorneys will represent Beem at a Thursday hearing in Lafayette with the Social Security Administration, which is considering the widower's case on appeal.

Attorneys are asking that Beem's claims be approved and applied retroactively to the date of his husband's death, Esman said.

Sarah Schultz-Lackey, a Dallas-based regional spokesperson for the Social Security Administration, said via email Tuesday the agency cannot comment on the case because of privacy concerns.

A policy made effective in February instructs SSA employees to recognize same-sex marriages from other states based on the day the unions were legalized, according to the agency's manual.

Yet the Social Security Administration denied Beem's multiple claims, made both before and after the Supreme Court ruling.

When interviewed at the Simcoe Street antiques business he co-owned with Conley, Beem said the couple wanted to marry in Louisiana among friends and family and were waiting for the eventual ruling that would allow it.

But Conley's health began declining, so they decided to marry in September 2014 in California, where they had begun their relationship three decades ago.

"In 1982, we never dreamed that it would ever be a possibility to have two men get married," Beem said, adding the couple spent "an awful lot of money on lawyers" over the years to ensure their partnership would be recognized in death.

Beem is still working to alter his husband's death certificate to indicate he died a married man.

The delayed application of the law is not a first in Louisiana's history with same-sex marriage.

The state was the only one that did not issue a single same-sex marriage license when the Supreme Court ruling was announced on a Friday morning, instead making couples wait until the following Monday for marriage certificates.

"It seems like Louisiana is awfully slow about doing things," he said. "It would be nice to be ahead of the ball for once."