Issue With Overlapping UIViews and Interactivity with UIKit/Swift - ios

Question

I am building an interface in Swift and UIKit targeting iOS. All of my views are programmatically constructed. I am having an issue where a UIView that overlaps another UIView (but does not completely cover it) prevents any tap events from passing through. The layout looks like this:
The navbar at the bottom is a custom view and functions fine. Tapping those buttons changes the active view behind it (the current view is the TextView with the SQL syntax highlighting). Above it is a UILabel (with the text "Connected") and a UIView (the circle with the gradient background). I will refer to this element as the "ButtonView" and the label as the "StatusView". The "StatusView" is anchored to the navbar and the enclosing view, and the "ButtonView" is anchored to the navbar and the "StatusView".
This is the relevant layout code:
view.addSubview(navBar!)
view.addSubview(status)
view.addSubview(button)
status.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
status.layer.masksToBounds = true
status.text = "Example String"
status.textColor = .white
status.layer.cornerRadius = 20.0
status.layoutMargins = UIEdgeInsets(top: 10.0, left: 10.0, bottom: 10.0, right: 10.0)
button.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
button.layer.masksToBounds = true
button.layer.cornerRadius = 35.0
// button.isUserInteractionEnabled = false
// button.backgroundColor = .white
NSLayoutConstraint.activate([
status.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: navBar!.topAnchor, constant: -10.0),
status.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.leadingAnchor, constant: 10.0),
status.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.trailingAnchor, constant: -90.0),
status.heightAnchor.constraint(equalToConstant: 50.0),
button.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: navBar!.topAnchor, constant: -10.0),
button.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: status.trailingAnchor, constant: 10.0),
button.widthAnchor.constraint(equalToConstant: 70.0),
button.heightAnchor.constraint(equalToConstant: 70.0)
])
The intended behavior is that even with the "ButtonView" present, the SQL view can still be tapped and edited. However, when the "ButtonView" is present, the SQL view can no longer be focused. If the "ButtonView"'s isUserInteractionEnabled property is set to false or the "ButtonView" is removed, everything behaves correctly. The "StatusView" does not seem to have any adverse effects, without having to edit any of its properties. (Note that there is no gestural behavior currently assigned to the "ButtonView", and that is not a UIButton). The debug view does not seem to show any overlapping layers:
Ideally, I would like to eventually add a gesture recognizer to this view, but wondering if that will forever disallow me from accessing the views that are further in the background? Is it possible to overlap interactive views like this, or am I somehow screwing up the responder chain?