Uber was already doing background checks in Austin. They quit in protest of a requirement that drivers be fingerprinted and forced to drive around with Uber decals on their cars.

Uber (combined with Lyft) spent $10,000,000 to lie to the people of Austin about the effects of Prop 1. At a conservative cost of $50 per finger-printing, that's enough to fingerprint 200,000 drivers.

I know because I received over 30 pieces of direct mail in the two weeks leading up to the vote from whatever clown-show operation they hired. Twelve of the direct mail pieces were the same mailer.

Given the waste of paper and their previous history (especially the behavior of the executives), I don't care if Uber ever "comes back."

Correct

Austin was requiring fingerprinting background checks, which have been shown to be much less accurate than the background check process that Uber currently uses. It's really a step backwards in every respect (speed, accuracy, cost).

I thought it had something to do with the type of background check and what was included

Yeah, here in Alberta, Uber wanted to be able to do their own background checks, but they were forced by the government to have the local police run background checks as well. Presumably there were a bunch of criminals passing the Uber background checks in the states and this needed to be addressed to meet the regulations.