CardView goes on top of FrameLayout, but declared first

In case someone gets here and the solution for setting elevation doesn't work for them (like in my case, where I needed to draw an image above the CardView and having a shadow on it was not acceptable), you can solve the issue by wrapping the CardView inside another FrameLayout. In the example provided, it would look something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><FrameLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"    android:layout_width="match_parent"    android:layout_height="wrap_content">    <!-- This is the added FrameLayout -->    <FrameLayout        android:layout_width="match_parent"        android:layout_height="wrap_content">        <android.support.v7.widget.CardView            android:layout_width="match_parent"            android:layout_height="200dp"            android:layout_margin="20dp"            app:cardBackgroundColor="#ff0000"            app:cardUseCompatPadding="false"            />    </FrameLayout>    <TextView        android:layout_width="match_parent"        android:layout_height="100dp"        android:text="i am top view!"        android:gravity="center"        android:layout_gravity="center"        android:textSize="30sp"        android:textAllCaps="true"        android:textColor="#00ff00"        android:background="#0000ff"        /></FrameLayout>

I might be joining the discussion a bit late, but if you can afford giving up the CardView's elevation, you can just set the cardElevation property of the CardView in your XML layout to 0dp.

Like so:

app:cardElevation="0dp"

Just add your text view inside the card view, far as I know the z order is undefined inside a frame layout, but last laid out view should be drawn last.

This probably had to do with that card views in lollipop use elevation while they fall back on border drawing code pre lollipop.