I have a parallax background made of several layers that parallax at different rates. The textures that contain transparency are somehow rendering over my sprite renderer and I don’t know how to change the priority.

I have a parallax background made of several layers that parallax at different rates. The textures that contain transparency are somehow rendering over my sprite renderer and I don’t know how to change the priority.

To answer my own question, yes, they do.
After digging around in the API I found a hidden variable for the Mesh Renderer. sortLayerName. Well, not really hidden since its documented, but its not listed in the component interface in the editor. Bit of an oversight when you have sprites with their own render priority on top of a quad that automatically assumes the default layer.
public string sortingLayer;
void Awake(){
for(int i = 0; i < SortingLayer.layers.Length; i++){
if(SortingLayer.layers*.name == sortingLayer)*
this.GetComponent<Renderer>().sortingLayerName = sortingLayer;*
}*
The order with which objects are drawn to the screen is a combination of their sorting layer and order, render queue, and distance from the camera (i e. z coordinate). Opaque objects are drawn first and sorted front-to-back and then transparent objects are drawn but sorted back-to-front. Balancing these variables to get the correct layering can be tricky when you have a complex scene. What shader and material properties are you using? Is your character actually closer to the camera than the background (it appears so from the screenshot).
– tanoshimi