HARRISBURG — A legal challenge to Pennsylvania’s tough new law requiring voters to show photo identification will reappear in court next week before the judge who initially refused to halt the law, even as registered voters claim they are being stymied in their attempts to get a valid photo ID.

A court clerk said Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson will take up the case Tuesday to comply with a state Supreme Court-ordered review of whether registered voters are able to get the state-issued photo IDs they need to vote.

If they cannot get the kind of easy access to a photo ID promised by the law, or if the judge believes any voters will be disenfranchised, then he is obliged to halt the 6-month-old law from taking effect in the Nov. 6 presidential election, the high court said in its ruling Tuesday.

The state Supreme Court asked for an opinion by Oct. 2, just 35 days before the election.

Simpson originally denied the request for a preliminary injunction in August, saying the plaintiffs did not show that “disenfranchisement was immediate or inevitable.” But the Supreme Court’s directions to the lower court set a much tougher standard for tolerating voter disenfranchisement than the one Simpson used.

On Thursday, Simpson denied a request by lawyers for the plaintiffs to block the law without holding a hearing. State officials say they believe that any legal voter who wants to get a state-issued ID is able to do so.

Meanwhile, officials in two of Pennsylvania’s most populous counties — Allegheny and Montgomery counties — were moving forward with plans to issue their own valid voter ID cards through county-owned entities such as nursing homes that are allowed by the law to issue them.

A spokesman for Allegheny County executive Rich Fitzgerald said the county is responding to a flood of complaints from residents that they are having a hard time getting a state-issued photo ID card.

Pennsylvania’s new law is among the toughest in the nation. The prior law required identification only for people voting in a polling place for the first time and it allowed non-photo documents such as utility bills or bank statements. The new law requires each voter to show a particular form of photo ID, such as a driver’s license or passport.

Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, signed it in March after every single Democratic lawmaker in the Republican-controlled state Legislature voted against it. A Philadelphia tea party group said that if the voter ID law is not in effect for the election, it will work to defeat two state Supreme Court justices if they run for retention.

Ron Ruman, a state spokesman, said it might take a couple days for county election officials to enter a person’s new voter registration information into the database once they receive it.