Opponents of a ban on Christmas carols in Maplewood and South Orange public schools will be allowed to argue their case at trial.

A federal district court in Newark ruled that a Maplewood man and his two sons could proceed with their lawsuit against the South Orange-Maplewood School Board’s strict prohibition against religious music — including the school system’s band members’ instrumental performance of Christmas songs. The ban extends to the bands’ performances off the schools’ premises.

The three-judge panel’s decision overturned a September 2005 ruling by Federal District Judge William Walls that the board had a “valid educational purpose” for its ban.

The case became national news in December 2004 after mostly conservative television commentators and newspaper columnists cited the ban as Exhibit A in the “war on Christmas.” At a board meeting that month, some Jewish residents argued there was no harm in performing traditional holiday music while others insisted that school-sanctioned performances of Christmas carols violate the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.

The suit was filed by Michael Stratechuk, a music teacher who argued that his two teenage sons were subjected to an “impermissible, government-sponsored message of disapproval and hostility toward religion.”

The appellate judges said the trial court “must afford Stratechuk” a chance to challenge school policy and give the board an opportunity “to test the legal sufficiency of Stratechuk’s First Amendment claim.”

He is being represented by two conservative Christian law firms, the American Catholic Lawyers Association of Fairfield and the Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor, Mich.

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the law center, said he was pleased with the appellate ruling and optimistic about winning at trial.

“The New Jersey school district’s anti-religious policy is yet another example of the militant hostility that many public schools have toward Christians and Christmas,” he wrote on the Center’s Web site. “The Grinch is alive and well in New Jersey, but not for long.”

No date has been set for the next court appearance.

“It was a procedural matter,” school board counsel Ellen Bass told NJ Jewish News. “There was no ruling on the merits of the case” by the appellate court.

“It’s a little bit of a setback, but I still think we’ll get the right decision in the end,” she added.