Microsoft Women Greeted by Skeptical Court in Unequal-Pay Case

Women engineers who claim Microsoft Corp. discriminates against them for pay and promotions faced tough questions from a federal appeals court weighing whether their ground-breaking lawsuit should become a class action.

During arguments Monday in Portland, Oregon, the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals challenged a lawyer representing three women suing the tech giant to explain how Microsoft’s policies favor men when managers dole out pay raises.

The panel is reviewing a Seattle judge’s June 2018 ruling that the women didn’t show enough of a common thread in their workplace experience to prove that a uniform Microsoft corporate ...