IT Support Technician Michael Hakopian (R) distributes computer devices to students at Hollywood High School on August 13, 2020, in Hollywood, California. With over 734,000 enrolled students, the Los Angeles Unified School District is the largest public school system in California and the 2nd largest public school district in the United States. | Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

Parents of students in the California public school system have filed a lawsuit against the state's Department of Education in an attempt to remove a chant to Aztec gods that's part of a new ethnic studies curriculum.

The lawsuit was filed Friday by the conservative legal firm Thomas More Society on behalf of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, individual taxpayers and parents of current and former students after their Aug. 26 letter to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction demanding withdraw of the Aztec prayer from the curriculum went unanswered.

The lawsuit says the "Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum" has been approved for the Golden State's public schools, which serve approximately 6 million students in some 10,000 schools. Although the program is reportedly voluntary, many schools districts have decided to use the curriculum in their classrooms.

The curriculum includes a section of "Affirmation, Chants, and Energizers," including the "In Lak Ech Affirmation," which invokes five Aztec deities, the lawsuit adds.

Although labeled as an "affirmation," it addresses the deities both by name and by their traditional titles, recognizes them as sources of power and knowledge, invokes their assistance, and gives thanks to them. In short, it's a prayer, the legal firm said in a statement shared with The Christian Post.

"Our clients have both a religious and civic objection to the Aztec prayer, and they do not want their children chanting it, being asked or pressured to do so, or risking ostracism if they refuse," said Paul Jonna, partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP and Thomas More Society Special Counsel.

"The Aztecs regularly performed gruesome and horrific acts for the sole purpose of pacifying and appeasing the very beings that the prayers from the curriculum invoke," Jonna said. "The human sacrifice, cutting out of human hearts, flaying of victims and wearing their skin, are a matter of historical record, along with sacrifices of war prisoners, and other repulsive acts and ceremonies the Aztecs conducted to honor their deities. Any form of prayer and glorification of these bloodthirsty beings in whose name horrible atrocities were performed is repulsive to any reasonably informed observer."

The curriculum unequivocally promotes Aztec gods or deities through repetitive chanting and affirmation of their symbolic principles which "constitutes an unlawful government preference toward a particular religious practice," said Frank Xu, president of Californians for Equal Rights Foundation.

"This public endorsement of the Aztec religion fundamentally erodes equal education rights and irresponsibly glorifies anthropomorphic, male deities whose religious rituals involved gruesome human sacrifice and human dismemberment," Xu added.

Thomas More Society said the curriculum also includes the Ashe Prayer from the Yoruba religion — "an ancient philosophical concept that is the root of many pagan religions, including santeria and Haitian vodou or voodoo."

The co-chair of the curriculum, R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, developed much of the material cited throughout the lessons, in which Christians, specifically those of European ancestry, are viewed as the source of evil to be resisted and overthrown.

White Christians are guilty of "theocide" against indigenous tribes, the killing of their deities and replacing them with the Christian faith, Cuauhtin argues in a chart.

The ultimate goal, according to Cuauhtin, is to engineer a "countergenocide" against whites, investigative journalist Christopher Rufo wrote about the issue in City-Journal in March.

Dr. Richard Land, the executive editor for The Christian Post, previously noted in his weekly column: "This is all so comprehensively evil and destructive it is hard to know where to begin criticism of this dangerous, divisive, retrograde cultural vandalism. The idea that a tax-supported public school system would, or could, be used to unleash this vicious cultural and spiritual poison into our young people's consciousness is both extremely offensive and quite possibly illegal."

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