<p>I would asume that if you have an extremely compelling and legitimate reason and you ask permission, then a college may allow you out of the ED contract. For example, if you apply ED to a school across the country and are accepted and then find out that your mother has terminal cancer, you could request your ED college to allow you to apply to other, closer schools. Many regular decision deadlines may have passed, but if not, I do not think another college would look poorly on something like this. But I think you would definitely need to ask permission from the ED school before you applied to another school.</p>