"a year into the pandemic" vaccines were literally just becoming available to the general public. Mandates pre-vaccine were a totally different ball game than mandates now, as far as what would be reasonable in the interest of public safety. I also find it hard to believe that Aurora was requiring strip mall stores to check vaccine cards before any vaccine was even fully FDA approved, and I can't find any evidence of that online either. Are you sure it wasn't something about verifying mask compliance?