California education authorities have agreed to drop a policy encouraging public school students to pray to Aztec gods after angry parents filed a lawsuit months ago. Among Aztec religious practices were the cutting out of human hearts and the flaying of victims and 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 “Aztec prayers at issue—which seek blessings from and the intercession of these demonic forces—were not being taught as poetry or history.” Rather, the California State Board of Education’s nearly 900-page Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC), “instructed students to chant the prayers for emotional nourishment after a ‘lesson that may be emotionally taxing or even when student engagement may appear to be low.’ The idea was to use them as prayers,” said Jonna, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs. The launch …