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Headline is misleading. He can change his name. It is just that the woman can do it by checking a block on the license while the man has to go through more tedious and expensive requirements.

Of course, the lawsuit is cheaper, right?

I'm sure he'll argue that he's trying to protect the right of other men to do likewise, but how many men take their wives' names even in states where it's no more difficult than vice versa?

It is quite normal for states to make it bureaucratically easier to do common things than to do uncommon ones. If I were the lawyer for the state, I would argue that the reason women have the easy checkbox is that so many of them take their husband's name that allowing the checkbox substantially reduces the amount of paperwork the state has to handle even though it means that searching for a list of names a woman has formerly used requires searching through the marriage files as well as the non-marriage name-change files. To allow husbands to take their wives' names without filing a separate name-change form would make it necessary to search both sets of files when doing background checks for men as well as when doing them for women.