In his first State of the State speech delivered Monday, Democratic governor Roy Cooper called on lawmakers to repeal House Bill 2.

Approved by lawmakers during a one-day special session and signed into law by Cooper's Republican predecessor, House Bill 2 limits LGBT rights and is the only state law in the nation to prohibit transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice in schools and other government buildings.

Passage of House Bill 2 led to an economic boycott of North Carolina worth more than $400 million in lost revenue, according to an analysis by Wired.

“This law has damaged our state,” Cooper said. “The Legislature must erase this law from our books. It drains the energy from what should be our work for the people of this state.”

“Let's do it this week. It's time to move on,” he added.

LGBT rights advocates applauded Cooper's inclusion of repeal in his speech.

“We commend Governor Roy Cooper for his continued support to repeal the deeply discriminatory HB2,” Ames Simmons, director of transgender policy at Equality NC, said in a statement.

“Since day one, HB2 has been nothing but trouble for North Carolina, and the blame for that lies squarely at the feet of the legislators who refuse to take any meaningful action to repeal it,” said JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president of policy and political affairs at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). “Gov. Cooper is ready to move forward from this debacle; Republican leaders in the General Assembly and the Senate must follow suit.”