Parents Sued California After It Required Aztec Prayer in Public Schools: State Now Agrees to Settlement

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State entities to publish public notice to all school districts about the changed policy; state to pay 100K in attorney fees

California education authorities have agreed to drop a policy encouraging public school students to pray to Aztec gods in response to a lawsuit filed months ago by angry parents.

Among Aztec religious practices were the cutting out of human hearts and the flaying of victims and the wearing of their skin.

Paul Jonna, partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP and special counsel for the Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm, said the โ€œAztec prayers at issueโ€”which seek blessings from and the intercession of these demonic forcesโ€”were not being taught as poetry or history.โ€

Rather, the California State Board of Educationโ€™s nearly 900-page Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) โ€œinstructed students to chant the prayers for emotional nourishment after a โ€˜lesson that may be emotionally taxing or even when student engagement may appear to be low.โ€™ The idea was to use them as prayers,โ€ said Jonna, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs.

The launch of the ESMC made California โ€œthe first state in the nation to offer a statewideย ethnic studiesย model for educators,โ€ the boardย boastedย on March 18, 2021, when the curriculum was adopted.

โ€œCaliforniaโ€™s students have been telling us for years that they need to see themselves and their stories represented in the classroom,โ€ state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said at the time. โ€œTodayโ€™s historic action gives schools the opportunity to uplift the histories and voices of marginalized communities in ways that help our state and nation achieve racial justice and create lasting change.โ€

The ESMC contained a section on โ€œAffirmation, Chants, and Energizers.โ€ Among these was the In Lak Ech Affirmation, which calls upon five Aztec deitiesโ€”Tezkatlipoka (God of the Night Sky), Quetzalcoatl (God of the Morning and Evening Star), Huitzilopochtli (God of Sun and War), Xipeย Totek (God of Spring), and Hunab Ku (God of the Universe).ย The pagan prayers address the deities both by name and traditional titles, recognize them as sources of power and knowledge, invoke their assistance, and offer thanks.

According to the plaintiffsโ€™ lawyers, even after the settlement, the ESMC โ€œis still deeply rooted in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and critical pedagogy, with a race-based lens and an oppressor-victim dichotomy.โ€ The Aztec chant component demonstrated โ€œthe politicized championing of critical consciousness, social justice, transformative resistance, liberation and anti-colonial movements in the state-sanctioned teachings of ethnic studies.โ€

But Frank Xu, president of Californians for Equal Rights Foundation (CERF), a nonprofit organization that is one of the plaintiffs, said the settlement gives him hope.

โ€œWe are encouraged by this important, hard-fought victory,โ€ Xu said in a statement.

Byย Matthew Vadum

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