I'd agree that someone who is on leave, and doesn't work, indeed"meets" expectations. It would be a problem only if everybody is expected to exceed expectations, but then all the evaluation process becomes, almost by definition, nonsensical.
If the employee would otherwise exceed expectations and took paternity leave, then they still exceed expectations. If they were hired in March and worked for 40 weeks, they would not be penalized for failing to work in January or February. Leave should be handled the same way.
If the employee was not professional about taking leave (didn't give any notice, did not work with colleagues to organize coverage of his tasks, etc.) then things are different. Similarly, if they promised to do something while on leave and didn't, then that would be an issue.
Being rated as someone who meets expectations is not a punishment.
Certainly, one has the right to exercise one's rights, but one also has a duty to acknowledge that they impact others. Someone who takes paternity leave will, mutatis mutandis, achieve less than someone who does not; someone who is on leave for an entire review period and does nothing related to work cannot fairly be said to exceed expectations.
On a scale of 1, 2, and 3, where each of these confers different privileges, when I knock you down from a 3 to a 2 specifically because of X, I am punishing you for X.
The corporate words tied to the ratings are not magical.
Is that true? I seem to recall a scene from Office Space and flair about this...
Seems like they shouldn't include leave in the review at all and only review when they're working.
It depends on what the rating is used for.