For reporters, legal observers and even many lawyers, the end of June marks the close of the Supreme Court term. For them, it is a time for retrospectives and scorecards.

However, the big cases that drew months of anticipation don't stop mattering once the opinions are released and the justices depart for their summer vacations.

That’s where July comes in — the month that marks the beginning of a sprint towards Election Day. It is now that the hardest work starts — parsing what the rulings mean for voters and figuring out how to respond to a dynamic legal and political environment.

In one of the biggest voting cases of the term, we prevailed — albeit narrowly — in protecting hundreds of thousands of voters from having their mail-in ballots discarded. Republicans spent millions trying to convince five justices that ballots postmarked by Election Day should be rejected if delivered late by a politicized U.S. Postal Service.

The GOP calculated that a victory would disenfranchise more Democrats than Republicans. It would yield them more electoral wins — the voters be damned.

In this case, Republicans came up short by a single justice. The work that my team did to fight this case from start to finish helped protect democracy. I am both relieved and worried.

Donald Trump's reaction was not to accept the result but to double down on the SAVE Act. Republican lawyers have suggested they may now target early voting. The Postal Service continues to threaten that it will refuse to deliver ballots that Trump does not want counted.

We will continue to fight to protect mail-in voting until the last ballot is cast and counted and the results certified. But Trump and the Republicans will be in court against us, and with deep pockets and a bevy of lawyers, the battles ahead will be long and hard...