These questions are not posed as conversation stoppers. The justifiability of FEO seems to be a wide open question, yet to be answered. Rawls's reticence does not show there is nothing cogent to be said in defense of FEO or another norm in the wider family of substantive equality of opportunity norms. Sometimes it is said that insistence on FEO preserves the status of all members of society as free and equal persons, but this claim seems to presuppose that dropping or downgrading FEO would be unjustified. If dropping or downgrading would be justified, free and equal persons could accept this without forfeiting their status. 