After the jury's verdict, the trial court considered the corporals' request that they receive the next available promotions to sergeant. The State opposed the request on the grounds that the corporals "are not eligible for immediate promotion because they have not passed the last testing requirement." The State also contended that the immediate promotion of the corporals "would displace other eligible corporals and would cause undue disruption within the Department of State Police."
The Court found that the State's arguments ignored the jury's findings: "The jury found that but for the State's illegal discrimination against them, the corporals would now be sergeants. The jury did not simply find that the corporals were eligible for promotion, but rather that they would have occupied actual positions of the governor's taskforce and the counter-terrorism unit had they not been the victims of illegal discrimination. The very purpose of remedial measures in an unlawful employment discrimination case is to place persons unconstitutionally denied an opportunity or advantage in the position they would have occupied in the absence of the discrimination.
"Applying this principle here, the corporals' eligibility for promotion is not the issue. Rather, the corporals should be promoted to sergeant positions, the positions they would have occupied but for the illegal discrimination. The corporals satisfied all eligibility requirements for promotion at the time of the illegal actions, and should not be required to repeat those requirements because the State's actions wrongly precluded them from being promoted."
The Court ordered the "instatement" of the corporals to the next available sergeant positions, and ordered the State to set the corporals' promotion date retroactively to December 1, 2001, for pensions, benefits and seniority rights.
Sullen v. Chaffinch, 2004 WL 2165832 (D.Del. 2004).