Can the zero-one principle be used to prove the stability of a sorting network
You can use a $0/1/2$ principle, in which the inputs are $\{0,1,2\}$, and $1$-inputs are also annotated by their indices. The network should sort the input successfully, maintaining the order of the $1$-entries. This is clearly a necessary condition, and it's not too hard to show that it is sufficient.

That doesn't quite answer your own question, though I conjecture that your criterion isn't sufficient. All one needs to do in order to prove my conjecture is to give a sorting network satisfying your condition but not mine. You can try looking for such a network using a computer. If you can find no such network, perhaps your criterion does work after all.